Qualcomm is Working to Bring Linux to Snapdragon X
- Paul Thurrott
- May 16, 2024
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Qualcomm said this week that it has “kept its eye on Linux” and is working to ensure the open source system works with its Snapdragon X processors.
“The Snapdragon X Elite system on chip (SoC) has been garnering attention for its remarkable performance in Windows on Arm PCs,” a recent post to the Qualcomm Developer blog notes. “At the same time, we’ve been keeping up our traditional efforts to make it easier to boot Linux on Arm-based PCs by upstreaming a consistent flow of patchsets for the Linux kernel.”
To this end, Qualcomm partnered with Arm, Lenovo, and Linaro on the AArch64 laptops project on GitHub, through which it has added support for its past several Snapdragon SOCs for PCs to Linux. This goes back to the original generation chipset, the Snapdragon 850, and continues forward to the Snapdragon X series. And it’s not an afterthought: With each generation SoC, Qualcomm has released Linux support within days of the initial release, and it points out that Snapdragon X Elite was no different: Its Linux patchset was published the day after the announcement in October.
Qualcomm’s contributions to Linux include support for UEFI boot via all the standard Linux bootloaders and a long list of drivers and features, including low-level chipset features, storage, USB connectivity, and more. And there’s more to come: It’s working to improve support for the Snapdragon X GPU, CPU, USB host, battery, speakers, video, camera, power management, and more. In the next six months, it expects to support end-to-end hardware video decoding in Chrome and Firefox, optimize CPU and GPU performance and efficiency, release its firmware as open source, and make easy installers available for Ubuntu and Debian.
Qualcomm has also published an experimental, raw disk image for its Debian installer, which it uses internally to test dual-boot configurations with Windows. This image currently only works with the red reference hardware it built, but Qualcomm says it will work with its PC maker partners and Linux distribution maintainers to port it to specific shipping devices.
If you want to learn more about this work, Qualcomm recently presented at the Embedded Open Source Summit 2024 and two of its presentations are available in video and slide deck form: