[coreboot] Lenovo G505S and Coreboot LTS Candidates list

[Vladimir]

Dear coreboot developers,

Francis Rowe (main Libreboot developer) has hinted an idea about adding
Lenovo G505S to Coreboot LTS Candidates list of laptops, which is hosted at
MrNuke's User talk coreboot wiki page. I believe it is an excellent idea,
because:

*1)* Lenovo G505S contains AMD APU, so there is no need to deal with Intel
ME/AMT so-called "features"
*2)* this APU has Richland architecture: as result (unlike the more recent
AMD offerings) it doesn't have "AMD Secure" feature -- based on ARM
Trustzone technology which already has some exploits against it; there are
security concerns about ARM Trustzone that are similar to concerns about
Intel vPro "feature" (remote management etc.)
*3)* this APU is A10-5750M, the most powerful mobile APU among Richland
designs - as result, this laptop is still very competitive regarding its
performance, and also price/performance
*4)* Unlike the older HP M6-1035DX amd laptop, Lenovo G505S seems to be a
very popular model: even now, more than 1.5 years after its' introduction,
there are >200 Internet shops in my large city still selling it new in box
- not used/refurbished
*5)* Lenovo G505s works without microcode updates, and already has a
working Coreboot build (although Video BIOS and SMU firmware have blobs
that are still not reverse-engineered; and some minor issues - e.g. ACPI
not perfect yet )

These great points are making me wonder, why this interesting laptop still
haven't been added to that LTS Candidates list? Does it fail to meet some
requirement for LTS candidates in a not-obvious way
(RYF-certifiable,Sturdy,Long shelf-life,Cool factor) or there is some
not-listed AMD laptop that could be a better candidate?

By the way, I have discovered that there are many modifications of Lenovo
G505S, which could be divided into three primary groups by their major
difference - GPU *(minor differences, such as different size of RAM or hard
drive, are not interesting)*
GPU modification groups:
*1)* only 8650G, which is built-in into APU (no dual graphics)
*2)* 8650G + AMD HD 8570M (dual graphics)
*3)* 8650G + AMD R5 M230 ( dual graphics, slightly more powerful than "2)" )
Are these modifications all supported by Coreboot? And would be there any
additional difficulties regarding modifications with dual graphics?

Your answers and opinions will be very welcome
Best regards,
Vladimir Shipovalov
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/attachments/20150406/fcbe4cfd/attachment.html>