New ASUS "Instant-On Linux" Details

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New ASUS "Instant-On Linux" Details

Following our ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux, Web Browser article, ASUS has released a series of slides to Phoronix containing additional information about their "Express Gate" functionality. Express Gate is meant to be complementary to your traditional operating system for when you want to surf the Internet without fear of Windows attacks and when you don't want to wait for your computer to turn on. ASUS Express Gate also consumes less power than using a traditional operating system.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjEwNw

[StringCheesian]

"Express Game" in paragraph 4.

[Michael]

"Express Game" in paragraph 4.

Fixed, thanks.

[StringCheesian]

Cool. Can they elaborate more on how it works? Like what the minimized POST skips? Or in what ways the kernel is optimized?

[Michael]

Cool. Can they elaborate more on how it works? Like what the minimized POST skips? Or in what ways the kernel is optimized?

Those details come out of SplashTop/DeviceVM, and I am now under embargo until Wednesday.

[Michael]

Those details come out of SplashTop/DeviceVM, and I am now under embargo until Wednesday.

Their website is now up. Once I have permission to post more information, I will post away. I learned more information today from DeviceVM and they are hopefully mailing me out the source-code soon.

[imcdnzl]

Mb instead of Kb

[QUOTE=phoronix;14561]Phoronix: New ASUS "Instant-On Linux" Details

I presume in the article you mean 64 MBytes instead of 64 Kbytes for the storage?

[Michael]

[quote=imcdnzl;14585]

Phoronix: New ASUS "Instant-On Linux" Details

I presume in the article you mean 64 MBytes instead of 64 Kbytes for the storage?

From the ASUS slide

CE is a proprietary real-time operating environment integrated inside the BIOS flash. Depending on the configuration it can be as small as 64KB, making it high speed and cost efficient to embed in current BIOS flash.

[coder4freecode]

Searching the ASUS website for 'Linux', I find 0 matches. Ditto for 'SplashTop' and 'Express Gate'. Looking at the P5E3 Deluxe manual, downloaded from their site, I find no references to the latter two terms, nor many others I came up with. All three references to 'Linux' are clearly referring to a user-installed setup.

Note that the description provided above:

The Core Engine is a "proprietary real-time operating environment" that is integrated inside the BIOS flash chip. The Core Engine can be as small as 64KB so that it can embed into current-generation BIOS flash chips. This Core Engine is made up of a multi-threaded operating system (Linux), a networking stack, and a set of drivers (LAN, USB, video, and audio).

would be a claim of a GPL violation: a Linux kernel cannot legally be proprietary if it is distributed in a product. There can be proprietary portions if they are included in separate modules - however, the description of the kernel being as small as 64K indicates that either they're not actually using Linux at all, they're only talking about the configuration data, not the actual core engine itself, or that they've made very significant code cuts which would necessarily be to the actual Linux kernel code.

[Kano]

64 Kb is too small for a kernel, that could only be a loader.