Phoenix BIOS Boots in 1 Second, Loads Win 7

By Marcus Yam
published

Not quite instant-on, but very-quickly-on.

One difference between many consumer electronics and the PC is the time it takes from hitting the power button until it's fully functional.

PCs have had to contend with far more complexities in its system, as well as slower storage media such as hard disk drives. While much of that we have to live with, the advent of faster storage solutions such as SSDs make the wait from power-to-desktop shorter.

Now Phoenix has created a new BIOS that will boot (or POST) a PC in just one second. Such a quick boot process means that it can shave a significant portion of the total load time of a cold system, with the rest of the wait being the loading of the operating system.

Phoenix demonstrated its technology on a Lenovo T400s equipped with an SSD. Just one second after the system was powered on, the drive access light began to flicker and a clean Windows 7 was loaded to the desktop in about 10 seconds.

Check out a video of the technology in action at LaptopMag.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
64 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gamerjames
    Impressive. Things keep getting more and more convenient :D
    Reply
  • tsk_cable
    Subarashi
    Reply
  • Damn, I can't get into the BIOS!

    Where's the Sledge Hammer?
    Reply
  • El_Capitan
    I hope they mark up the price an extra $100 for this special feature. F2, F2, F2.... damn it, missed it again! Reboot... F2, F2, F2... #@$!
    Reply
  • Scotteq
    Subarashi

    Yah - Wonderful ;)
    Reply
  • Seems like the bios is booting devices in parallel instead of in series, and also might make use of faster flash memory.
    Reply
  • They'll need to include a set of turnkeys unique to each individual motherboard to allow administrators to get into the system BIOS while at the same time keeping everybody else out. I button would be too simple.

    Honey, Where'd I leave my Keys?

    NOOoo, I did not want the car keys, I wanted the keys to my computer!!!
    Reply
  • myriad46
    scotteqYah - WonderfulROFLMAO!!!
    Reply
  • myriad46
    El_CapitanI hope they mark up the price an extra $100 for this special feature. F2, F2, F2.... damn it, missed it again! Reboot... F2, F2, F2... #@$!Wrong Quote, ROFLMAO inteded here.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    While instant-on OSes on a chip like Splashtop are nifty, getting rid of the BIOS for a faster boot would be nice. Of course this means giving up the ability to set the CHS values for your 10MB MFM and RLL drives.
    Reply