Patent ID: 8880858

Claim:
A method for estimating boot-time memory requirement in a data processing system, the method comprising: the data processing system identifying, using system configuration information associated with the data processing system, a set of components needed for booting up the data processing system; the data processing system determining an ancestry of a component identified in the set of components, the component including a memory estimator program, wherein the ancestry of the component is a set of devices that must be activated as a consequence of needing the component to boot up the data processing system, wherein the ancestry includes a device of the data processing system needed to boot up the data processing system; the data processing system receiving, using the memory estimator program of the component, a boot-time memory requirement of the component; the data processing system calculating a total boot-time memory requirement; and the data processing system determining whether an amount of real memory of the data processing system satisfies the total boot-time memory requirement.