APPARATUS FOR INITIALIZING MEMORY USING A HARDWARE ENGINE FOR MINIMIZING BOOT TIME

Methods and apparatus for initializing memory using a hardware engine for minimizing boot time. Booting of firmware in a computer system including one or more memory devices and a processor System on a Chip (SoC) including a central processing unit (CPU) having a plurality of cores and a memory controller coupled to the one or more memory devices is initialized. In parallel with at least a portion of booting the firmware, a plurality of memory ranges in at least one memory devices is initialized using at least one scrub engine. The at least one scrub engine may be embedded in the memory controller or external to the memory controller. Memory devices and ranges within those devices may continue to be initialized in parallel with booting an operating system following firmware booting. The scrub engine includes one or more registers or embedded memory used to program/store descriptor chains describing memory ranges to be initialized.