Systems and methods for accelerated loading of operating systems and application programs

• US 8,112,619 B2
• Filed: 10/19/2006
• Issued: 02/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Realtime Data LLC (Realtime Data Compression Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Realtime Data LLC (Realtime Data Compression Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Fallon, James J., Buck, John, Pickel, Paul F., McErlain, Stephen J.
• Primary Examiner(s): SURYAWANSHI, SURESH
• Application Number:
  US11/551,211
• Publication Number:
  US 20070043939A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,937 Days
• Field of Search: 713/2
• US Class Current: 713/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/24 Resetting means
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0613 in relation to throughput
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0638 Organizing or formatting or addressing of data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0658 Controller construction arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0676 Magnetic disk device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4406 Loading of operating system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4408 Boot device selection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/445 Program loading or initiating bootstrapping G06F9/4401; security arrangements for program loading or initiating G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/30 Compression speech analysis-synthesis for redundancy reduction G10L19/00; for image communication H04N; Expansion; Suppression of unnecessary data, e.g. redundancy reduction

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing accelerated loading of operating system and application programs upon system boot or application launch are disclosed. In one aspect, a method for providing accelerated loading of an operating system comprises the steps of: maintaining a list of boot data used for booting a computer system; preloading the boot data upon initialization of the computer system; and servicing requests for boot data from the computer system using the preloaded boot data. In another aspect, a method for providing accelerated launching of an application program comprises the steps of: maintaining a list of application data associated with an application program; preloading the application data upon launching the application program; and servicing requests for application data from a computer system using the preloaded application data.

Claims

1. A method for providing accelerated loading of an operating system comprising:

maintaining a boot data list, wherein at least a portion of boot data is associated to said boot data list;

preloading said at least a portion of boot data into a memory upon initialization of said computer system;

accessing said at least a portion of boot data in a compressed form from said memory;

decompressing said at least a portion of boot data in compressed form accessed from said memory at a rate that increases the effective access rate of said memory; and

utilizing said decompressed at least a portion of boot data in loading said operating system for said computer system.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said at least a portion of boot data comprises program code associated with an application program.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said preloading comprises retrieving said at least a portion of boot data from a memory device and storing said retrieved at least a portion of boot data into said memory.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said preloading is controlled by a data storage controller.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating said boot data list.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating said boot data list by associating additional boot data to said boot data list.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating said boot data list by removing the association of additional boot data from said boot data list.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a request for additional boot data not previously associated with said boot data list.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request for additional boot data not previously associated with said boot data list; and

adding to the list any boot data requested by the computer system not previously stored in the list.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising removing the association of additional boot data from said boot data list not requested by said computer system.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising compressing said at least a portion of boot data to provide said at least a portion of boot data in compressed form.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising compressing said at least a portion of boot data to provide said at least a portion of boot data in compressed form, wherein said compressing is performed by a data compression engine.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising compressing said at least a portion of boot data to provide said at least a portion of boot data in compressed form, wherein said compressing is performed by a data compression engine and sad data compression engine performs said decompressing.