(quotes moved from Arne goes mainstream - where the discussion was "wrecking" the thread, lol.)

Korth wrote:
Note to ASUS: do something about excessive startup/shutdown times on whatever flagship X299 mobo you launch, lol. It's pretty shameful to see a $500 laptop hit the desktop almost a full minute before a $500 mobo in a $5000 desktop catches up.

Raja@ASUS wrote:
Not much one can do when there are so many bells and whistles and startup routines that are mandatory for the platform to function correctly. A laptop is an order of magnitude simpler as a device.

Korth wrote:
What you say is true, and I do understand why.

It just seems like some years ago there was huge emphasis on fast startup times, CPU and chipset and BIOS and OS and drivers (and even some technical standards) all designed to get things up and running ASAP. And today you can cold-boot a lightweight PC (with a fast SSD and basically no other hardware) to desktop in less than ten seconds, almost like the "instant on" behaviour on a smartphone/tablet (which is not technically "powered off" anyhow).

I'd just think a little more focus on this woefully-neglected area might yield good results. Sure we can always "quick boot" past the memory polling and half the other usual POST stuff. There will always be essential hardware initializations for mobo-embedded hardware, gotta get all the critical Q-Codes outta the way.
But the boot process is then still entirely linear, kinda dumb in this day and age of multicore everything. There must be a point where boot processes can then proceed in parallel, especially because of some really "slow" things (like network, storage, and USB enumerations) which need to all be completed but which don't need to be completed in any particular order - running several or all of these things simultaneously (while perhaps also completing some linear boot things like IRQ allocations) could easily chop boot times down (especially when things timeout). The mobo firmware needs to only poll or monitor all "unfinished" tasks until all hardware and firmware reports ready to go. Maybe little or nothing can be done about slowness after a WinOS takes over, but not everybody runs Windows.

Imagine a BIOS which offers advanced boot options. Far more than just pick your boot drive. Pick which nonessential hardware boots at all. When, and in what order. With user-specified timeouts and priorities. Such a shame to see boot time hang for 30 seconds because the network handshake isn't friendly enough or because some troublesome USB device decides to misbehave or because Intel's latest-and-greatest storage drivers are designed to methodically plod and crawl even when provided a world-class formula one racetrack.

Maybe you can only trim boot down by about 5 seconds. Maybe not at all. But I think some sort of "ROG Boot Acceleration" technology which can slam an X299 from freezer to desktop four times faster than the competition is something that would attract serious attention. True, a stable and properly configured system doesn't need to boot/reboot itself more than a few times per day. But this is the sort of innovation everyone can enjoy, and it would be especially happy for overclockers who tend to spend so much time rebooting and rebooting as they tweak and test in small increments towards their maximum performance thresholds, lol.

It's the one (glaring) area ... aside from price ... where everyman "mainstream" computing devices are truly superior.

Raja@ASUS wrote:
I think this is an issue of external perception. The amount of requests that fly in for BOOT times always puts focus on this area. The issue is mainly people not understanding how complex a high-performance platform is to set up for operation. There are so many things that require resets and retraining that there's not much one can do without upsetting the balance elsewhere.

There's one mantra I do like when people have an unnatural preoccupation with BOOT time, and that's use suspend to RAM. Quick way back to the desktop if you're losing money during BOOT time...

Again, thanx for your response, Raja.

You're saying a "simpler" platform boots faster while the "complex" platform boots slower - because obviously the complex platform has many more complex tasks to process at startup - but it's just not realistic to provide user more options about which specific complexities are (and are not) supported at boot time?

Yes, we can skip things like memory POST, the "Quick Start" BIOS setting is wonderful. We can disable legacy USB support, PCIe slots, onboard network, onboard audio, etc ... although I'm not convinced this stuff has much impact on startups (unless they fail/timeout).

The way to clarify "issues of external perception" is to reveal internal perceptions, lol. Why, for example, can't a multicore processor be used to boot multiple devices in parallel when their (arbitrary and proven) boot order is non-sequential?

Suspend to RAM, sleep, hibernate, and other low-power states cannot cold-boot or warm-boot a system. They're of little use for pushing towards hard overclocks.

It seems I do have an unnatural preoccupation with boot time, lol. The optimist sees the glass is half full, the pessimist sees the glass is half-empty, the engineer sees the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Excessively long/slow boots may or may not be a real issue, but surely the engineers can't continue to deprioritize/ignore it forever? ROG mobos proudly boast all sorts of innovative tech, always trying to push specs farther and faster, always trying to outclock (and outsell) the competition, no detail is ignored ... so why ignore this one?