[coreboot] Removal of AGESA - to be or NOT to be? A story of G505S

[Vladimir]

Yes, I really want to participate in the Lenovo G505S porting from AGESA to
Native Init ! But, to be honest, I have never done such a task before, so
my experience is probably not enough for doing this port alone by myself :
I cannot even estimate the amount of necessary work and don't know where to
start... (Dear Timothy, could you please point me to any good examples of
AGESA --> Native Init porting?) However, I will be very glad to help as
much as I could by being a build tester: I can constantly test these
"native init" builds on my hardware - as many build iterations as it needed
in order to help make "Native Init" a stable and good enough candidate for
replacing AGESA

Also I will seriously consider donating some Money/Things to those coreboot
developers who will make significant commits for bringing G505S "Native
Init" port to life, although my financial abilities became very limited
after Rubble currency collapse so unfortunately I cannot guarantee this
type of support as well as how much would be the amount of donations...

Lenovo G505S uses quad core A10-5750M APU which is Richland architecture.
This architecture does not include PSP hardware ( ARM TrustZone security
co-processor) , so luckily this Family 15h RL laptop does not need a PSP
blob ;-)

By the way there are just two AMD-based laptops that are supported by
coreboot, and another one is HP M6-1035DX which has weaker hardware /
smaller availability / lack of manufacturer support (HP quickly forgets
their old laptop models and probably already stopped replacement
motherboards production for this laptop - but I'd be happy to be wrong
here) . As for now, G505S seems to be the only AMD laptop which is
supported by coreboot and is really alive , so hopefully its code will be
allowed to stay in its AGESA shape until a stable "Native Init" replacement
will be introduced

Best regards,
Vladimir Shipovalov



On 6 November 2015 at 20:34, Timothy Pearson <
tpearson at raptorengineeringinc.com> wrote:

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> On 11/06/2015 04:11 AM, Vladimir wrote:
> > While the possibility of AMD AGESA boards 'removal' is being discussed,
> > I would like to tell you about Lenovo G505S - which has Compal LA-A091P
> > AMD Family 15h RL AGESA board.
> >
> > * Did you know that Lenovo G505S is still widely available at some parts
> > of the world? (e.g. in Russia, 50+ online shops are still selling it)
> > * Did you know that Francis Rowe, head Libreboot developer, has proposed
> > the addition of G505S to Coreboot LTS Candidates list of laptops?
> > * Did you know that Compal will still be making LA-A091P laptop
> > motherboard, the primary component of G505S, at least until the end of
> > 2018 year?
> > (although these would be meant for Lenovo technical repair workshops,
> > any person will be able to buy them by request even at 1pcs quantities)
> >
> > It is unbelievable that some people here want to take alive-and-kicking
> > motherboard and 'remove it': either 'remove' a support for it
> > completely, or degrade it into a 'second class citizen' - by branching
> > it off to some abandoned branch that nobody would care about. Don't know
> > which is worse...
>
> Slightly off topic, but if the Lenovo G505S uses a Family 15h processor
> it should be possible to port it over to native initialisation (thus
> ensuring it's continued existence as a first class citizen, even if this
> discussion comes up again eventually).
>
> I was also unaware that true Family 15h CPUs had made their way into
> laptops; do you know if that particular device requires a PSP blob or not?
>
> One last comment regarding removal.  At minimum I would expect that none
> of the boards, chipsets, or CPUs shown in the board status repository
> from at least the past few months should be candidates for removal.  As
> you can see K8 is definitely listed:
> http://review.coreboot.org/gitweb?p=board-status.git;a=summary
>
> Thanks!
>
> - --
> Timothy Pearson
> Raptor Engineering
> +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line)
> +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard)
> http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
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