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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

#241

Post by wtallis »

Keyframe wrote: post #231
wtallis wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam gaming with FEX is possible on the DGX Spark. The GPU is approximately a mobile 5070 with much less memory bandwidth. The CPU cores are relatively weak, especially after the instruction set translation overhead. There's a lot of stuff that's playable , but the performance is laughably bad for a $4000 machine.

FEX wouldn't affect GPU side of things though. Also, it's a machine that fits into one and a half hand. I'd call it alright for what it is actually in the context of the size.

FEX is relevant to real use cases because a lot of things that would be GPU-limited on an x86 machine can become CPU-limited when running on DGX Spark. The overhead of x86 to ARM translation, plus the low performance of the ARM cores, plus the overhead of WINE all add up to Windows games running on DGX Spark sometimes being CPU-limited and under-utilizing the GPU.

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

#242

Post by peppersghost93 »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #239
peppersghost93 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the model laptop I've got. It's only where it's at because of a small group of community members working on it, it took ages to get where it's at now and I still get random reboots when doing basic things on Linux. It doesn't inspire much hope for future snapdragon laptops.

Interesting. What kernel and distro are you running? It's been my stable daily driver with Linux 6.15/6.16/6.17 under Void Linux. It happily runs KDE and Vivaldi for me, with a few PWA's (Slack, Zoom) to bridge the gap of no closed-source software targeting aarch64.

Ubuntu 25.10 and kernel 6.17, which was advertised to support this laptop. I'm not doing anything crazy with it when it randomly reboots. Just mundane things like file management.

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

#243

Post by E39M5S62 »

peppersghost93 wrote: post #242
E39M5S62 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What kernel and distro are you running? It's been my stable daily driver with Linux 6.15/6.16/6.17 under Void Linux. It happily runs KDE and Vivaldi for me, with a few PWA's (Slack, Zoom) to bridge the gap of no closed-source software targeting aarch64.

Ubuntu 25.10 and kernel 6.17, which was advertised to support this laptop. I'm not doing anything crazy with it when it randomly reboots. Just mundane things like file management.

I can't say that I've ever seen that on mine, but it seems to be a real crap-shoot with the x13s. Some people in #aarch64-laptops have random crashes all the time, others (like me) have a completely reliable system. It could be something weird that Ubuntu is doing with the kernel.

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

#244

Post by ece »

bayindirh wrote: post #240
maverwa wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are in the business of buying parts, assembling them, and selling the assembly under your brand (as tuxedo and others like them are), then Apple is a indeed not an option. Their chips might be the best, but you still can only get them in Apple devices, in the specs Apple provides and with no official support for any OS beside macOS / iOS.

That's true. What I wanted to point out is the fact that the most tightly integrated and arguably the most locked down platform on the market is more open than a platform designed to be adapted by others and sold by many. I don't expect any daily-driveable alternative operating systems on Apple systems since it's a continuously moving target, yet Apple doesn't have a such heavy-handed approach. They just do their thi…

This comparison makes no sense. It's desktops/laptops vs phones. In either case Apple is the worst offender. You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs, or install other OSes on iPhone.

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

#245

Post by znpy »

rat9988 wrote: post #157
znpy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that page smells like a pr stunt. Go all in or go home, qualcomm.

You'd rather have nothing it seems.

Kinda yes?

Nowadays the standards for Linux support are much higher. This isn't the 1990s anymore. Releasing a half-assed support that will be obsolete in six months is pretty much useless.

Also, the fact that the drivers have not been upstreamed tells me they're most likely sub-par in terms of code quality and possibly stability.

What's the point of buying hardware whose softwares support is already deteriorating ?

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

#246

Post by aystatic »

ece wrote: post #244
bayindirh wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. What I wanted to point out is the fact that the most tightly integrated and arguably the most locked down platform on the market is more open than a platform designed to be adapted by others and sold by many. I don't expect any daily-driveable alternative operating systems on Apple systems since it's a continuously moving target, yet Apple doesn't have a such heavy-handed approach. They just do their thi…

This comparison makes no sense. It's desktops/laptops vs phones. In either case Apple is the worst offender. You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs, or install other OSes on iPhone.

> You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs

afaik you technically can, except that m1/m2 force pcie bars to be mapped as device memory (forbids unaligned r/w), so most gpu software (and drivers) that just issue memcpys to vram and expect the fabric to behave sanely will sigbus. it's possible to work around this, and some people indeed have with amdgpu, but it'd absolutely destroy performance to fix in the general case

so it doesn't really have anything to do with apple themselves blocking it but rather a niche implementation detail of the AS platform that's essentially an erratum

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

#247

Post by ece »

aystatic wrote: post #246
ece wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comparison makes no sense. It's desktops/laptops vs phones. In either case Apple is the worst offender. You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs, or install other OSes on iPhone.

> You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs afaik you technically can, except that m1/m2 force pcie bars to be mapped as device memory (forbids unaligned r/w), so most gpu software (and drivers) that just issue memcpys to vram and expect the fabric to behave sanely will sigbus. it's possible to work around this, and some people indeed have with amdgpu, but it'd absolutely destroy performance to fix in t…

You would think Apple would update this or put out another support page supporting what you're saying: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102363

There's also an Apple VP saying unified memory on AS doesn't leave room for DGPUs and separate VRAM.

I think this is more than just an erratum, even with newer chips. It's monopolistic behavior all too common nowadays.

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

#248

Post by aystatic »

ece wrote: post #247
aystatic wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot even use Nvidia/AMD/Intel DGPUs with AS Macs afaik you technically can, except that m1/m2 force pcie bars to be mapped as device memory (forbids unaligned r/w), so most gpu software (and drivers) that just issue memcpys to vram and expect the fabric to behave sanely will sigbus. it's possible to work around this, and some people indeed have with amdgpu, but it'd absolutely destroy performance to fix in t…

You would think Apple would update this or put out another support page supporting what you're saying: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102363 There's also an Apple VP saying unified memory on AS doesn't leave room for DGPUs and separate VRAM. I think this is more than just an erratum, even with newer chips. It's monopolistic behavior all too common nowadays.

don't see why they would care to put out docs on it considering macos doesn't even permit kexts anymore, there'd be no gpu drivers anyways. i figured it was obvious we're talking in the context of running linux on these things, given the parent topic.

> There's also an Apple VP saying unified memory on AS doesn't leave room for DGPUs and separate VRAM

can you link to this? my intuition is that they're speaking on whether apple would include dgpus inside AS systems like they used to with nvidia and amd chips in macbooks, which i agree wouldn't make much sense atp

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

#249

Post by ece »

aystatic wrote: post #248
ece wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think Apple would update this or put out another support page supporting what you're saying: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102363 There's also an Apple VP saying unified memory on AS doesn't leave room for DGPUs and separate VRAM. I think this is more than just an erratum, even with newer chips. It's monopolistic behavior all too common nowadays.

don't see why they would care to put out docs on it considering macos doesn't even permit kexts anymore, there'd be no gpu drivers anyways. i figured it was obvious we're talking in the context of running linux on these things, given the parent topic. > There's also an Apple VP saying unified memory on AS doesn't leave room for DGPUs and separate VRAM can you link to this? my intuition is that they're speaking on whe…

There were uses for DGPUs in MacOS before AS, those uses could have continued, but Apple left no choice. It's weird how continuity wasn't as important to Apple in this case.

Whatever kernel or hardware facilities are available to Apple's own GPU driver, should be available to other GPU drivers. Anything else is myopic thinking, which I realize might be common for Apple, but it is also monopolistic.

Linux also allows userspace drivers with less performance I think, but I don't think DGPU use can be made performant because of AS hardware choices.

I am predisposed to ignoring link requests for things that can be easily googled.

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