Improving Android Boot Time Outline

From eLinux.org
Revision as of 17:25, 28 July 2010 by Tim Bird (Talk | contribs)

(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Here is the outline for my talk:

  • Title
  • Outline
    • Android boot overview
    • Measuring boot times
    • Problem areas
      • Some gory details
    • Ideas for improvements
  • Android boot overview
    • bootloader
    • kernel
    • init
    • zygote
      • building preload heap
      • start package manager
    • service manager
      • start services
  • measuring bootup time
    • systems measured: adp1, n1, evm
      • adp1 with donut
      • n1 with eclair
      • evm with eclair
        • NOTE: used nfs root filesystem (file IO timings might be bogus)
  • Tools for measuring and tracing boot time
    • stopwatch
    • grabserial
    • printk times
    • bootchart
    • strace
    • logcat
    • method tracer*
    • ftrace*
  • stopwatch
  • grabserial
  • printk times
  • bootchart
  • strace
  • logcat
    • extra instrumentation for preloading classes
    • PARSE_CHATTY flag for package scanning
    • mention my own tool 'logdelta'
  • method tracer*
    • method traces is built in to
    • ftrace?? (no)
  • Problem Areas
    • First, a bootchart for EVM board
    • bootloader init
    • kernel init
    • zygote class preloading
    • package scanning
    • service initialization
  • bootloader init
    • outside scope of this talk
    • didn't measure commercial bootloader, only development one (U-boot)
  • kernel init
    • is mostly the usual suspects
    • (initcall_debug results)
    • USB
  • zygote class preloading
    • zygote pre-loads just under 2000 classes, and instantiates them in its heap
    • controlled by file:
  • package manager package scan
    • exact purpose is not known
      • validation of certificates, permissions, capabilities and dependencies, etc.?
    • EVERY package is scanned at boot time
  • ideas for enhancements
    • kernel speedups
    • optimize package scan
    • optimize class preloading
    • miscellaneous optimizations
    • sreadahead??
  • kernel speedups
  • optimize package scan
      • most definitely
      • need to continue analysis
        • most likely, should switch to a compressed flash file system
    • use pre-constructed dalvik heap? (difficult?)
      • thread the heap construction?
  • sreadahead??
    • could use sreadahead to pre-fill page cache
    • however, this just masks bad behavior
      • Contacts.apk (half of 1.6M) is read 4 times! during boot
      • filling page cache makes reads after first one fast, but it would be better to avoid all these reads altogether
        • better to just optimize or eliminate parseZipArchive()
    • sreadahead should be used dead last (after all other enhancements) 
      - don't know how to preconstruct heap
      - need to analyze heap
        - FIXTHIS - is heap identical on every boot?
          - how to dump heap memory
          - how to dump any memory in Android??
        - are parts identical??
    - zoneinfo inefficiencies
       - measure without strace, and see if time is a problem
  - remaining questions
    - future directions
Retrieved from "http://elinux.org/index.php?title=Improving_Android_Boot_Time_Outline&oldid=22543"