ASRock has a ploy to sell more of its motherboards: Instant Boot. The BIOS update for select MoBos promises to boot XP or Vista systems 10 times faster than standard PCs -- in other words, about 3 to 4 seconds from a full shutdown. ASRock achieves this minor of miracles through manipulation of the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface that Microsoft manipulates for its sleep and hibernate modes. At the risk of oversimplification, ASRock appears to add the processing baggage to the backend of the shutdown process, essentially rebooting the OS and then dropping it into a suspended state ready to instantly pop on the next time you hit the power button. Pretty smart actually. Here's the catch: the system you're using
must be limited to a single user account without any password protection -- a definite no-no for corporate environments. See what happens when Hugo and George steal Dad's camcorder after the break.
[Thanks, Daniel]
posted Nov 14th 2008 6:38AM
no password and single user wont even cut it in my house
Why not modify this start-up to include a password prompt prior to start-up??? It seems pretty simple.
....to protect your pr0ndentity!
does he want to fight?
That was. . . entertaining.
Oh... my god. How come... your computer... booted up so fast.
Meme in 3, 2, 1...
UGHHHH SOO SLOWWW !!
i love this guy...speaks perfect english, perfect grammar but w/ a sweet ass accent. "hey george, say hi to everybody...yeah"
Very impressive.
But password comes first, sorry.
But is it really that impressive at all? My laptop is almost always on and I'm only rebooting if some install or something requires it. If this takes the time from bootup and sticks it onto the shutdown, the overall time to reboot is the same. Furthermore, it's no faster than a start from hibernate, which is what I use in place of a full shutdown (and which allows multiple user accounts and passwords, thankyouverymuch).
Awesome video! I really felt the pathos of his "Oh... so slow" at 3:09.
Here's an article by a couple of guys who managed to get Linux to boot in 5 seconds:
http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/
but that's linux
"Devices used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons, or the stream of water itself."
Even though some are saying they need a password protected pc. Maybe at least this will reduce a certain amount of time for boot up.
With luck, this sort of development will do away with the need to "boot" at all. Unless I need to install system updates that require a full restart, I can't think of a reason why I'd want to have to close down all my applications and documents. For this reason I always use a sleep function and then I can just continue from where I was the next time my computer is started.
We call it .. S3
lol is it the guy from the famous LGA775 motherboard installation vid found on youtube?
Is it too early to start generating oscar buzz for these boys?
If you're thinking of the 2089 awards held on Mars, than just, yes.
In some respects this research sounds like Deep Sleep, i.e. entering a suspended state with the contents of memory written to the disk and the power turned off. This is something I sometimes use on my MacBook Pro when traveling for extended periods where battery drain during a normal sleep is unacceptable. However, the report's restore time of about 4-seconds is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than anything I see when restoring state (about 20-seconds, at a guess). So this is something that sounds damned useful and certainly much more useful than this silly idea of an instant-on OS that only does a couple of things.
Deep Sleep on the Mac also does not require the user to re-authenticate when woken by default, although I think that can be enabled. However, I am quite sure that the authentication available will be nothing much more than a password protected screensaver, so improvements there for security is definitely required.
Ummm...that's more like Windows Hibernate...that takes much longer than this to restore, especially when you have 4GB+ of RAM.
This offers a fresh boot of windows...i'm assuming it increases shutdown time in order to decrease boot up time.
@schmitty338
It does not surprise me that Vista has an equivalent to Deep Sleep, and I'm not even certain that is the correct name of it for the Mac (I downloaded a widget for Dashboard that enables the Deep Sleep option to be used otherwise simply closing the lid sends the laptop into a normal sleep).
The thing here is that I don't see why you would want a clean boot of the OS. If you need to reboot your PC then you have to close all your documents and applications, and then relaunch them when the boot up has completed. This is an unnecessary hassle. Unless an OS update appears that requires a reboot then my computer will go for months without being rebooted. A computer that can be put into a sleep state whereby it saves its memory into a non-volatile medium and draws no power whilst being able to restore state in a couple of seconds sounds pretty whizzy to me. If it wants to restart the OS then I'm much less interested.
Every once and a while you just need to do a RAM dump. Windows is bad for allowing ghost processes to run after closing a program.
@Super S
Without wanting to get into an OS debate, is that still not fixed even in Vista? On a modern computer it should not be necessary to have to reboot after x-period of time. Rather, you should only need to restart if you are installing system files.
After seeing the vid, I just could'nt help but think of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaiMi66DK14
Damn, that's funny!
This is not a boot up its just a pc thats wakes up from sleep quicker.
ITs sort of FALSE advertising. Notice how there is no bios boot up or windows boot up screens?
ITs just a faster wakeup from sleep mode thats all.
Why are you complaining? For all intents and purposes, it's instant boot without the power drain of the system being on 24/7.
Boot Up = BAD
With luck, this development will make the boot cycle a thing of the past (well, you know what I mean).
The difference between Instant Boot and waking up a system from sleep mode is that you have to reboot your computer and then put it into sleep mode or hibernating mode. In Instant Boot, the motherboard does this automatically during shutdown so that when you do an Instant Boot, you are using a fresh boot up of Vista.
Instant Boot does NOT wake up faster than sleep mode, for the record. The advantage is that you get to work with a clean boot of Vista.
In the video it says that “fast mode” (3–4s) does only work when the power supply is kept plugged in which seems to be the same as hibernate. How long would it boot using the “regular mode”? Would it still be faster or just be a normal boot? Foxconn has a feature which basically eliminates the POSTing time by storing those information in a chip. ATM this seems more solid to me.
Woah, hold on there people. Get it right: hibernating stores your RAM into your harddrive, which is reloaded into the RAM when you resume from hibernation. Hibernatin also completely shutdown your system, so you can unplug the system and still be able to resume after the power is reconnected.
Sleep or Standby mode activates your RAM only so you save power, but since RAM is volatile, a loss of power will cause the RAM to lose its contents.
POST time is actually pretty short at around 2-5 seconds in my experience; It's the windows startup that takes the majority of boot time.
According to broli (user below), Regular mode stores boot information on Flash memory, which should be much faster than any traditional harddrive. Logically, this will make Instant Boot faster than waking up from hibernation.
P.S. Do not change components when your system is hibernated, especially RAM; this may cause errors and BSoD.
I'm not sure if Windows does this as well now, but there's an in-between sleep state that seems to be default on current Mac laptops (well, definitely on a Oct 2006 MacBook Pro). I think this state is called Safe Sleep and it tries to combine the best points of Sleep and Hibernate. Basically, when the laptop is put to sleep it backs up the contents of memory to the disk (like Hibernate) but it maintains the contents of memory using power (like Sleep). When woken the laptop will simply restart from its Sleep state but if the memory is empty because power ran out then it will repopulate the memory with what was recorded to the disk, like it was starting from Hibernate. This gives a nice safety net but does mean that you lose space on your disk equal to the quantity of RAM in your computer and also the time taken to go to sleep is longer.
This doesn't advance the discussion much (sorry about that) but since you were talking about Sleep and Hibernate I thought I'd throw in another option. Carry on...
@icepop: You’re right, I didn’t use the correct technical term. Still, from what I read on the AsRock website, InstantBoot basically has the same boot times as S3/S4 and only differs in that it boots from a fresh image rather than from the hibernation file. On the website there is no mention of a special flash memory to store the data on in “regular mode”; and technically it is based on S4 (and S3 for “fast mode”, respectively): http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp
So booting in 4 seconds AND completely plugging off the computer apparently does not work.
@icepop: You’re right, I didn’t use the correct technical term. Still, from what I read on the AsRock website, InstantBoot basically has the same boot times as S3/S4 and only differs in that it boots from a fresh image rather than from the hibernation file. On the website there is no mention of a special flash memory to store the data on in “regular mode”; and technically it is based on S4 (and S3 for “fast mode”, respectively): http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp
So booting in 4 seconds AND completely plugging off the computer apparently does not work.
From what it does, “regular mode” seems to be comparable to HORM (Hibernate once resume many) on Windows XPe.
(hope I get the reply right this time)
@Kelmon
Vista has the same funtionality, it's named Hybrid Sleep.
@Kelmon: Yes thats true, however it's implementation is ass.
Because the MBP is writing upwards of of 4GB to disk, it takes an extra 30-60 seconds for your laptop to go to "sleep."
So you have to either plan ahead, and give your laptop time to go to sleep before you move it; wait for it to finish; or go to regular sleep, which just goes into low-power operation.
@balls
Well, it's been a couple of years now but just closing the lid and moving the laptop hasn't resulted in problems yet, although I expect that either dropping it or waving it around wouldn't be wise.
@Jagster
Cheers for the confirmation.
@Kelmon
Well twice now (all within the past 2 months actually) I've had my Macbook crash on sleep... i heard somewhere that it's due to a clash between safe sleep and the sudden motion sensor... as in.. if the SMS gets activated while the system is performing a safe sleep, it crashes.. the worst thing is, the computer never gets to sleep, so u have a system that is on, lid closed, and most probably in a insulated laptop sleeve/pocket, causing potential damage due to overheating... yea.
I'd assume this problem could be corrected via a firmware update, or even just software update.. but it's still yet to come as far as i know...
The best way stays to let Windows switched off ;-)
That was by far one of the most entertaining things I've seen all year :)
Wow, quite a feat to pull off for a company mainly known for bargain (yet sometimes quite nifty) scotch-tape-and-string motherboard contraptions. Make it multi-user capable, strap it on a "full-grown" Asus board and people might just take it seriously.
Oh, and of course the most adorably nerdy presentation ever. Thumbs up!
*sigh*
Nice, but, yah.
We'll be there someday.
WHY NOT?
Fast mode: Keeps only RAM on juice.
Regular mode: Stores RAM content in flash memory on mobo.
"On the left side with a traditional boot up machine his name is HUGO!"
*pause*
"YEAH!!!!"
xD
thats fair cool, tho i will bet it sort of depends on your start up progs. If there a lot i guess it might slow it down.
Its not BOOTING up it just makes waking up from sleep faster.
Isn't it better to create just a simple sw tool which does run-once procedure, which puts PC into a sleep mode after reboot than buying a new motherboard from these wise-guys?
It's really just putting it to sleep after it's rebooted... well, in hibernation so it uses less power I guess.
I don't see anything too special in this, especially with its limitations but it'd be good to see more in this field
I am complaining because boot up is not equal to waking up from sleep.
I can conserve more power by completely shutting off my pc and the power strip its plugged into then putting it into sleep .
Booting up and shutting down uses more power than letting it sleep on most PCs in a typical week so you actually will save power if you leave it to sleep. In sleep mode you're only using the smallest amount of power which can be compared to shutting down and Booting up once a week.
Not always true with laptops though. Similar effect it just means less battery in the morning either way.
@Thi mam:
A computer in standby can easily use 5W. If it's in standby for 8 hours that's 0.04kWh
If the running computer consumes 100W and takes 1 minute to boot:
0.0016kWh
Even if you half the standby power, and double the running power you're still ahead shutting the machine off.
I still go into standby if I'm away for a while and don't need the machine running, because it's quicker to come bck and I don't have to close my applications.
I don't get what the big deal about boot times is. In Vista sleep works great so why even shut the computer down a few seconds and you are entering your password and back at the desktop.
Vista sleep *IS* great.
However Vista still suffers from memory fragmentation over time. So after a while, memory usage will be suboptimal. Rebooting fixes that issue.
This 4-sec bootup is just a hoax, it is cannot cutoff AC power or batteries.
These are just a Hibernation (20-sec) mode and a Sleep (3-sec) mode to it changed a sleight of hand for their ad. A shameless merchant.
Came here to post this.
Anyone notice how George looks like Jerry Yang?
lol at "Hugo". I think I'll go buy a new MoBo from ASRock as well ;)
Or you could just put it in standby mode where it's only using like 4 watts of power to get instant on.
where's kumar? :D
Golf Clap... HEHE, great movies.
Well as long as we are playing shenanigans I can get XP to instant boot in 2-3 seconds and it doesn't involve any restart then sleep tricks and the system can have multiple logins with passwords.
How is this possible you may ask? Its called a VM, I never said I was instantly booting a physical machine. Shady marketing 101.
Thats not necessarily true. These guys are optimizing for use.
When you boot up your computer, you're likely waiting for it to start up.
When you are shutting down, assuming it's not a reboot, you're likely done computing and will walk away.
So why not add extra time to shutdown to optimize start up?
The only suck is if you need to power off to add hardware.
so basically
"please install our software, which works on your BIOS, and remove any passwords and accounts which may divide the harddrive and make it complicated for us to manouvre around whilst you are sleeping"
Brilliant
dj Raj Lovesoul
http://www.lovesoul.tv
Another innovative motherboard from Taiwan.
I am impressed.
Hey look everyone, an marketing employee!
Falcon you are hilarious
is that 'clak'? i can't really see, your message is too pale
Thans on a newly installed OS, how well would it do after you've install Norton, Photoshop, paintshop Pro, Mesh, SpyBot SD, AWC, Ect.
I wonder how well it would boot XP.
im not able to watch the video, but it seems, from comments here, whats happening is the shutdown was padded with bootup sequence, and then the windows suspend? is this a joke?
Why not just HORM. This has been around for years, and Windows XP embedded supported this for years. HORM = Hibernate Once Read Many. Take a good boot, then hibernate, and use that hibernate image each time you power up. People building Car PCs have known this for years, as booting each time you start a car wood just take too long.
Wow must be fun working at Asrock, just look at Hugo's enthusiasm... Instant Boot hmmm looks like George moved the mouse and the monitor was off, I didn't even see the Windows logo on Hugo's monitor. I don't know....
@icepop: You’re right, I didn’t use the correct technical term. Still, from what I read on the AsRock website, InstantBoot basically has the same boot times as S3/S4 and only differs in that it boots from a fresh image rather than from the hibernation file. On the website there is no mention of a special flash memory to store the data on in “regular mode”; and technically it is based on S4 (and S3 for “fast mode”, respectively): http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp
So booting in 4 seconds AND completely plugging off the computer apparently does not work.
From what it does, “regular mode” seems to be comparable to HORM (Hibernate once resume many) on Windows XPe.
4 sec for Instant boot, 46 for none... and this dude said almost "10 times as fast"???
what a mathematician lol
His maths is better than your punctuation and grammar.
46 divided by 4 = ?
@Samboini
Yea, why don't you tell your mom and sister to come over and teach me, Mr. Spelling Bee
Instant Boot + logoff.exe in startup = better prank now
"I'd tell you to go to hell, but I work there and I wouldn't want to see you every day."
fucking engadget and your shitty reply button!
These guys seem to be confusing tongue-in-cheeck laughability, with moronic mouse waving.
I'd rather experience a clear, concise and proffesional vid, despite the likely prospect of boredom, than suffer this barrage of ninnery.
Oh my good gowd! How cool is Hugo!!! I want to be your friend Hugo!
Ok, so they basically gave sleep mode(S3) a new name, removed the security of booting back to a password, removed multi-user support that XP and Vista already support, and saved about 1 second of wake-up time and decided its worth selling it as a feature? Blow me, I'll keep my password thanks.
There is no way that "instant boot" has some magic to actually go through the whole booting process in 4 seconds. It is obvious what this does: Instant boot fast mode is Stand by. Instant boot regular mode is Hibernate. Big whoop. If you need to restart your computer, you're still going to have to turn this auto-standby off.
*Correction -
"keep on stroking Steve Jobs' cock"
Thank you
The countdown to disaster - T minus 4 seconds.
Yeah! Why not?
Awesome... Can't wait until this is most motherboards out there in the future.
This is most boring and dumb news posted here yet, posted by boring and dumb people that work here.
Good job!
I'm losing all respect for all of you that work here.
good thing to know such a technology out there but i'll pass since im running os 24/7
thanks for the hard work people
are you for real?
good work !
just watch, it takes like 10 minutes to shut down...
How do we know they didn't just have the computer in sleep mode? There wasn't even anyone sort of bios text or anything at the beginning.
The 'instant-boot' machine didn't actually boot windows. The Vista splash screen didn't display and neither did the startup sound/image. It looks like it woke up from a sleep state.
My guess is that they rewire the shutdown to actually be something like reboot. It turns off the screen and does the reboot.
Windows launches and when it's done it automatically puts the machine into a suspended sleep state.
The realistic test is install a windows update patch and time how long it takes from the moment you start installing the update until you've finished rebooting and productive again.
Wouldn't a complete reboot cycle suffice? On to Off and back on.
is asrock still using those cheap chinee capacitors that leak and can cause a fire? yeah, lots of people will appreciate this comment. i remember having to change the cappies right above the dimm slots back in the p4/pentium D days, as there were the first to "explode". secondly, most people pay for their electricity. i doubt this feature will be used much.