Hardware acceleration of boot-up utilizing a non-volatile disk cache

A method comprising:

• storing a boot program used by an information-processing system in a nonvolatile memory cache which receives all or a portion of the boot program from a system boot disk;
• accessing the boot program stored in the cache by a CPU so that the information-processing system can boot in whole or in part from the cache:
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein during the initial system boot, the cache is loaded with data from the system boot disk and the loaded data is marked valid,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the data in the cache is valid, and
• wherein cache coherency is maintained by detecting cache misses, and if a miss is detected, the cache is aged, to invalidate all or a portion of the cache data.

A method comprising:

• storing a boot program used by an information-processing system in a nonvolatile memory cache which receives all or a portion of the boot program from a system boot disk;
• accessing the boot program stored in the cache by a CPU so that the information-processing system can boot in whole or in part from the cache:
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein during the initial system boot, the cache is loaded with data from the system boot disk and the loaded data is marked valid,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the sector data in the cache is valid,
• wherein a filter driver is positioned between the CPU and the system boot disk,
• wherein the filter driver has access to all input-output (I/O) requests to the boot disk,
• wherein the filter driver has access to a cache map and detect writes to system boot disk data that is also stored in the cache.

An information-processing system comprising:

• a CPU;
• a boot disk storing a boot program used by the system to boot;
• and
• a nonvolatile memory cache receiving all or a portion of the boot program from the boot disk and storing it for access by the CPU so that the computer system can boot in whole or in part from the cache:
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein during the initial system boot, the cache is loaded with data from the boot disk and the loaded data is marked valid,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the data in the cache is valid,
• wherein if boot data is subsequently written to the boot data on the boot disk, the corresponding data in the cache is marked invalid.

An information-processing system comprising:

• a CPU;
• a boot disk storing a boot program used by the system to boot;
• and
• a nonvolatile memory cache receiving all or a portion of the boot program from the boot disk and storing it for access by the CPU so that the system can boot in whole or in part from the cache:
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein during the initial system boot, the cache is loaded with data from the system boot disk and the loaded data is marked valid,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the data in the cache is valid, and
• wherein cache coherency is maintainable by detecting cache misses, and if a miss is detected, the cache is aged, to invalidate all or a portion of the cache data.

An information-processing system comprising:

• a CPU;
• a boot disk storing a boot program used by the system to boot;
• and
• a nonvolatile memory cache receiving all or a portion of the boot program from the boot disk and storing it for access by the CPU so that the system can boot in whole or in part from the cache:
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein during the initial system boot, the cache is loaded with data from the system boot disk and the loaded data is marked valid,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the sector data in the cache is valid,
• wherein a filter driver is positioned between the CPU and the system boot disk,
• wherein the filter driver has access to all input-output (I/O) requests to the boot disk,
• wherein the filter driver has access to a cache map and detect writes to system boot disk data that is also stored in the cache.

A computer system, comprising:

• a CPU;
• a boot disk storing a boot program used by the computer system to boot;
• a nonvolatile memory disk cache receiving all or a portion of the boot program from the boot disk and storing it for access by the CPU, so that the computer system can boot in whole or in part from the disk cache;
• and
• a controller for controlling the boot disk,
• wherein the cache is loaded with data from sectors read during an initial boot sequence,
• wherein the loaded cache data is mapped to the data from which it is loaded,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, sequence sector data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding sector data from the boot disk if the sector data in the cache is valid, and
• wherein if data is written to a sector read during the initial boot sequence, the cache line corresponding to the sector is marked invalid.

A computer system, comprising:

• a CPU;
• a boot disk storing a boot program used by the computer system to boot;
• a nonvolatile memory cache receiving all or a portion of the boot program from the boot disk and storing it for access by the CPU, so that the computer system can boot in whole or in part from the disk cache;
• a controller for controlling the boot disk;
• and
• a filter driver between the CPU and the controller,
• wherein the cache is initially marked invalid,
• wherein the cache is loaded with data from sectors read during an initial boot sequence,
• wherein the loaded cache data is mapped to the data from which it is loaded,
• wherein during boots of the system subsequent to the initial boot, data in the cache is used instead of the corresponding data from the boot disk if the data in the cache is valid,
• wherein the filter driver has access to all input-output (I/O) requests to the boot disk, and
• wherein the filter driver has access to a cache map and can detect writes to the disk which correspond to data in the cache.