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Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

qualcomm.com

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Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#51

Post by gtirloni »

saagarjha wrote: post #46
sidkshatriya wrote: post #26

I am excited about the prospect of Linux on another powerful aarch64 platform like Snapdragon Elite. But, as far as I can tell from the diagram on the link shared, you will boot into EL1 and not EL2. This means that you cannot run a hardware accelerated VM on KVM (via something like qemu). This makes a Snapdragon Linux laptop not as useful. BTW Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon enters on EL2 which allows qemu+KVM. Enterin…

The ARM vendors are annoyingly stingy about providing access to this. You’ll probably have to use Qualcomm’s proprietary hypervisor and even then it’s not clear whether they’ll give you enough access to run a VM.

> You’ll probably have to use Qualcomm’s proprietary hypervisor

This one?

https://github.com/quic/gunyah-hypervisor

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#52

Post by jorvi »

jakjak123 wrote: post #42
sidkshatriya wrote: post #26

I am excited about the prospect of Linux on another powerful aarch64 platform like Snapdragon Elite. But, as far as I can tell from the diagram on the link shared, you will boot into EL1 and not EL2. This means that you cannot run a hardware accelerated VM on KVM (via something like qemu). This makes a Snapdragon Linux laptop not as useful. BTW Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon enters on EL2 which allows qemu+KVM. Enterin…

«linux-firmware» is the goto place to dump firmware that goes to all linux distributions

Tangentially related but I wish we had something similar to LVFS but for IoT devices.

That way, you would only need to have one hub (Homey, Home Assistant, IKEA, Apple TV, etc.) and it would be able to keep all your stuff up to date and control everything via Matter. Right now, we are slowly moving towards a future where any hub can control any device, but you still need to run the vendor hub if you want firmware updates.

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#53

Post by Nullabillity »

okanat wrote: post #48
darthrupert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't recommend Huawei for anything. Also Lenovo is a chinese company. I think it's best to wait for System76 or someone like Asus to get there.

System76 uses Clevo and Sager notebooks with little modifications. Both of them are purely Chinese. With your logic anything produced after ca. 1995 is unusable.

Clevo seems to be Taiwanese, not (mainland) Chinese?

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#54

Post by cjk2 »

klausa wrote: post #31
viraptor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be late. There's a significant amount of people who cannot use macs for work. If Qualcomm succeeds with the x86 translation, they'll still be the only real option for that segment, even if they're behind M4. (Also likely for people who don't have $$$ to throw around for hardware)

I think if you expect these to land in budget devices; you're going to be sorely disappointed.

They're going to end up in extremely shit high end devices which will be canned after 6 months of poor sales and bad reviews.

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#55

Post by mmaniac »

cjk2 wrote: post #54
klausa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you expect these to land in budget devices; you're going to be sorely disappointed.

They're going to end up in extremely shit high end devices which will be canned after 6 months of poor sales and bad reviews.

It's always the same song and dance with Windows on ARM.

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#56

Post by speed_spread »

cjk2 wrote: post #54
klausa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you expect these to land in budget devices; you're going to be sorely disappointed.

They're going to end up in extremely shit high end devices which will be canned after 6 months of poor sales and bad reviews.

Microsoft _might_ make interesting Surface models out of it and price them in a somewhat reasonable fashion. Bad reviews will be done by people expecting x86/M4 performance with Windows and MacOS. But what is needed is non-Mac stable and open ARM Linux platform that is more powerful than a RPi5.

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#57

Post by lmz »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #45
vbezhenar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that for many use-cases containers already replaced VMs even for developers. And you obviously can't run accelerated x86 VMs either way. So probably won't be a big issue.

> And you obviously can't run accelerated x86 VMs either way. But Qualcomm should allow users to run accelerated aarch64 VMs on a Snapdragon Elite (just like users can on Asahi Linux). > I think that for many use-cases containers already replaced VMs even for developers. If you're happy with running containers then you'll be fine. However, many developers like VMs for the extra isolation they bring and other features…

Worst case there's always UserModeLinux.

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#59

Post by my123 »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #26

I am excited about the prospect of Linux on another powerful aarch64 platform like Snapdragon Elite. But, as far as I can tell from the diagram on the link shared, you will boot into EL1 and not EL2. This means that you cannot run a hardware accelerated VM on KVM (via something like qemu). This makes a Snapdragon Linux laptop not as useful. BTW Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon enters on EL2 which allows qemu+KVM. Enterin…

You'll have EL2 on Snapdragon X Elite.

If it's using the design that I prototyped while at Qualcomm, it's jumping to EL2 at ExitBootServices when the boot to Linux at EL2 option is enabled.

Didn't look at a release firmware yet to see what was the final impl, but was told that it did ship :)

Re: Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite

#60

Post by sidkshatriya »

my123 wrote: post #59
sidkshatriya wrote: post #26

I am excited about the prospect of Linux on another powerful aarch64 platform like Snapdragon Elite. But, as far as I can tell from the diagram on the link shared, you will boot into EL1 and not EL2. This means that you cannot run a hardware accelerated VM on KVM (via something like qemu). This makes a Snapdragon Linux laptop not as useful. BTW Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon enters on EL2 which allows qemu+KVM. Enterin…

You'll have EL2 on Snapdragon X Elite. If it's using the design that I prototyped while at Qualcomm, it's jumping to EL2 at ExitBootServices when the boot to Linux at EL2 option is enabled. Didn't look at a release firmware yet to see what was the final impl, but was told that it did ship :)

The boot flow diagram on the article indicates the user gets dropped off into EL1 and not EL2, sadly though. The article is from Qualcomm so I would assume this the current official situation.
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