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Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

qualcomm.com

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Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#141

Post by flto »

nrclark wrote: post #119

If anybody in Qualcomm leadership is reading this thread: this is a good start, and I applaud you for it. There is also a lot more to do if you're serious about growing your market penetration beyond phones. The drivers might be up on LKML, but they're not mainlined yet. And this is just gen5. It would be great if you could fix your gen4 and 4.5 drivers, so that people building products with your chips weren't stuck…

> Also your boot-chain is still closed and proprietary

Nowadays the entire thing until you land in EL1 needs to be signed by Qualcomm as well. This is without "Secure Boot" enabled. OEMs only get to run code under the hypervisor. And you might want to use a part of the hardware but someone decided the VM your code runs in shouldn't have access to that, too bad.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#142

Post by prmoustache »

zamadatix wrote: post #105
kop316 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Linux, that issue is solely because of non-upstreamed drivers. With that, it can be a first class citizen just like any other processor.

It's second class on Windows because it doesn't support game DRM and generally performs worse for the price than an x86 laptop. About the thing it really has going for it is better battery life. Using Linux doesn't really change either of those problems, though it does get you away from the mess that is Windows 11. 1st party native software support is high and 3rd party native software support is higher than Linux. B…

10y old laptops are still powerful enough for my usage. So a bit more battery life wouldn't hurt me if performance of an arm system provides at least as much in term of performance.

I am pretty sure 99% of the population is in the same situation.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#143

Post by koiueo »

jorvi wrote: post #112
kop316 wrote: post #18

As someone who uses Mobile Linux, I am pretty excited to see this, but I can't help but wonder if this is only a "Business decision" and not necessarily Qualcomm turning over a new leaf for being FOSS friendly: - Their Snapdragon X laptop didn't do very well, and they likely realize an ARM Windows laptop will always be a second class citizen: https://www.techpowerup.com/329255/snapdragon-x-failed-qualc... . - Likewis…

> Their Snapdragon X laptop didn't do very well, and they likely realize an ARM Windows laptop will always be a second class citizen Why? So far ARM laptops provide either vastly better battery life for the same performance or vastly better performance for the same battery life. Even versus discrete GPUs. Within a couple years from now you're gonna look like an utter fool for buying x86 (and Nvidia / AMD / Intel GPU)…

Can't say about windows, but Linux is spotty despite the loud announcement about official upstream Linux support

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Discontinuation-of-ARM-no...

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#144

Post by surajrmal »

tr45872267 wrote: post #91
surajrmal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone expects non specialized os images to run on this hardware. That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out. The kernel is just a tiny piece of what's necessary because drivers have effectively moved into userspace. Graphics is the only area that has embraced this properly in "desktop Linux"

>That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out Can you expound on this? And can desktop linux take advantage of it or do something similar?

The android hal situation is tied to binder and a lot of androidisms. It would be a pretty big shift in culture to adopt that stuff into desktop linux. ChromeOS is likely rebasing on top of android in part to take advantage of the bsp layer abstractions android provides. A proper organization needs to be formed to take on this challenge and I'm not sure any of the existing players are well equipped to lead the charge. Valve and other os distributors who want to ship arm products should be sufficiently motivated though. Most just end up choosing to build on top of Android though because it's easier.

The stability layer also doesn't actually let you seemlessly update the kernel. Those userspace binaries are coupled to specific kernel releases, and it requires work on the vendors part to facilitate new kernel version upgrades. Maybe being upstream will force them to actually take backwards comparability with older userspace binaries more seriously though.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#145

Post by floatboth »

shmerl wrote: post #75

> The Adreno user mode driver (UMD) from Qualcomm Technologies is available as a downloadable Debian package and provides Vulkan 1.4 API support as well as the necessary GPU-related firmware. Are they already using Turnip / Mesa as their Vulkan implementation or not yet? If not, they should. Valve are using Turnip on their Steam Frame. That would be another step of working with upstream, besides the kernel driver.

Mesa MR for a8xx is coming. It's just not done yet. But they have full time employees working on Mesa.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#146

Post by floatboth »

cmxch wrote: post #108

Actual bare metal Linux or under a hypervisor? I thought Qualcomm used a hypervisor to isolate the Linux environment that is taken for granted on x86.

EL2 is coming by default on Glymur (X2E) (yaaaay), can be enabled in config on some IoT platforms, and can be booted into via Secure Launch on previous compute platforms (Hamoa/Purwa aka X1E/X1P, SC8280XP), search for slbounce.

On phone platforms.. probably not? Or Android might want it for pKVM..

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#147

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Qualcomm did this in 2024. They pushed some patches to LKML, and issued a press release to brag about it. (https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-...)

Yet 2 days ago, Tuxedo Computers announced they were abandoning Qualcomm due to crap support. (https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/tuxedo_axes_arm_lapto...).

  In particular, the long battery runtimes – usually one of the strong arguments for ARM devices – were not achieved under Linux. 
  A viable approach for BIOS updates under Linux is also missing at this stage, as is fan control.
  Virtualization with KVM is not foreseeable on our model, nor are the high USB4 transfer rates.
  Video hardware decoding is technically possible, but most applications lack the necessary support.
There is nothing in this press release to suggest they've changed.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#148

Post by floatboth »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #47

Eh. The CPU might be supported in Linux, but all of the rest of the hardware to make a laptop is left dangling in the wind. Look at the X1E laptops to see how far "upstream Linux support for a CPU" gets you. They aren't targeting enthusiasts with this announcement.

X1E laptops have fully working DisplayPort+USB3+USB2+PD over USB-C unlike Asahi Macbooks :p There really aren't that many gaps in X1E laptop support left.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#149

Post by shmerl »

floatboth wrote: post #145
shmerl wrote: post #75

> The Adreno user mode driver (UMD) from Qualcomm Technologies is available as a downloadable Debian package and provides Vulkan 1.4 API support as well as the necessary GPU-related firmware. Are they already using Turnip / Mesa as their Vulkan implementation or not yet? If not, they should. Valve are using Turnip on their Steam Frame. That would be another step of working with upstream, besides the kernel driver.

Mesa MR for a8xx is coming. It's just not done yet . But they have full time employees working on Mesa.

Oh, that's good!

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#150

Post by floatboth »

afr0ck wrote: post #82
summa_tech wrote: post #54

Does KVM hypervisor work? Previous Qualcomm CPUs have locked hypervisor mode behind Qualcomm proprietary blobs, and only allowed HyperV to use it - this was definitely the case for WOS laptops.

I worked at Linaro, who was contracting for Qualcomm. Qualcomm were pushing for some protected hypervisor called Gunyah (which had its own Linux interface and needed a new qemu port) that apparently no one liked. I tried to port it to KVM [1], but upstream folks (mostly Google) outright rejected the port. Otherwise KVM would have been available on QCOM boards. You can still try it. I have a Linux kernel and a Qemu po…

Upstream would accept a patchset that exposed an independent Gunyah-specific UAPI (why not the same one as downstream — crosvm already supports that) instead of pretending to be KVM (it's not a "port", you can't port a hypervisor to a hypervisor).

KVM is available on current compute platforms (laptops) if you escape to EL2 via slbounce; and on Glymur (X2E) it will be available by default (yay!).

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