Qualcomm {Hardware} Assist More and more In Good Form On The Mainline Linux Kernel
After years of labor by Qualcomm and Linaro engineers, the Qualcomm SoC assist on the mainline Linux kernel has lastly matured sufficient that new {hardware} assist tends to return fairly shortly and be effectively supported. With the forthcoming Linux 6.8 kernel the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can boot on the mainline kernel, the Snapdragon-powered ThinkPad X13s has been popular with Linux developers because of the upstream assist, and different Qualcomm-powered gadgets tending to play extra properly with upstream Linux nowadays fairly than having to resort to vendor kernel builds.
Neil Armstrong with Linaro offered at FOSDEM 2024 final week in Brussels across the mainline assist on Qualcomm SoCs. Armstrong famous all of the work over the previous decade on Qualcomm assist and in the end how with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 they reached the purpose of upstream assist in simply two months after the general public Qualcomm announcement of the platform.
With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on Linux 6.8 there’s working show, USB-C, USB / PCIe / Bluetooth, CPU frequency scaling, droop/resume and even crypto accelerator assist. However nonetheless a work-in-progress is audio assist, DP Alt-Mode, enabling the DSPs, USB-C energy supply, and GPU acceleration.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X13s was additionally talked about for its typically nice assist. Plus numerous Linux distributions operating simply on this ARM laptop computer.
Be taught extra concerning the Qualcomm {hardware} state on the mainline Linux kernel through Neil Armstrong’s FOSDEM presentation. The video recording and slide deck can be found on FOSDEM.org.