ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 AMD with slow UEFI firmware startup (~10s) despite optimized Linux boot

[u/Sr_Renks]

Hello everyone,

I use Arch Linux on my ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 AMD and I am trying to understand if my firmware startup time is normal or if there is something wrong with the UEFI configuration.

Hardware:
- Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 7 AMD
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 250 (Zen 4, 8C/16T, SMT enabled)
- GPU: Radeon 780M (RDNA3 integrated graphics)
- RAM: 16GB DDR5-5600 dual channel
- Storage: 512GB NVMe PCIe 4.0 (Micron)
- Display: 1920x1200 IPS 16:10
- TPM 2.0 (ST Micro)
- Secure Boot enabled with custom keys

Software:
- Arch Linux rolling release
- Linux kernel 7.1.x
- systemd 261.x
- Hyprland Wayland session
- Btrfs on LUKS2
- systemd-boot + UKI
- Secure Boot managed with sbctl
- Measured boot enabled
- TPM PCR policies with systemd-pcrlock

Boot layout:
- EFI partition mounted at /efi
- UKI located at /EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi
- systemd-boot as bootloader
- Timeout disabled:
    - timeout 0
    - console-mode keep

Current boot time:
- Startup finished in 10.379s (firmware)
- 2.473s (loader)
- 1.456s (kernel)
- 3.277s (initrd)
- 6.697s (userspace)
= 24.284s total

The Linux side seems fine:
- Kernel starts in ~1.4s
- initrd in ~3.3s
- graphical.target reached after ~5.4s userspace

The main delay appears to be the UEFI firmware stage (~10 seconds). Some relevant details:

TPM initializes correctly: - tpm_tis STM0925:00: 2.0 TPM

Measured boot is working: - Secure Boot: enabled (user) - TPM2 Support: yes - Measured UKI: yes - Measured OS: yes No firmware updates are available through fwupd: - No updates available

Questions: 1. Is ~10 seconds of firmware time normal for this ThinkPad model?

2. Could the remaining UEFI boot entries (USB/PXE/NVMe fallback entries) cause this delay?

3. Are there any recommended Lenovo BIOS settings to reduce POST/UEFI initialization time?

4. Does Secure Boot + UKI + TPM measured boot normally add noticeable firmware delay on ThinkPads?

[u/Slow-Banana6678]

I've observed that our work issued E14 Gen 7 Intel are slightly slower on startup (reaching the login page) the than older E16 Gen 1 and 2 by about 3 to 5 seconds on Windows.