Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform just a few days ago, but Linaro has just announced that Linux was already upstreamed to the premium mobile SoC featuring a 3.2 GHz Arm Cortex-X3 “Prime” core, four performance cores at up to 2.8 GHz, and three Efficiency cores clocked at up to 2.0 GHz.
Most of the work was done by Linaro Engineers Abel Vesa and Neil Armstrong with initial support posted on November 16th on the Linux kernel mailing list, and with the set of patches released so far, it is even possible to boot a minimal AOSP image on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 development kit shown below which should be manufactured by Lantronix, if history is any guide.
The following features are enabled in mainline Linux for the Qualcomm 8 Gen 2 processor, codenamed SM8550:
- Qualcomm Kryo CPUs with DVFS and Power Control support
- System – Clocks, Power controllers, PMICs
- Storage interfaces – UFS, SDXC
- High-Speed Peripherals – PCIe Gen3 and Gen4, USB SuperSpeed (5Gbps)
- Low-Speed I/O – I2C, SPI
- Qualcomm Hexagon Processor Subsystems namely Audio, Sensors, Compute, and Modem
Code development for upstreaming the Linux kernel for the SM8550 can also be followed on the CodeLinaro website where you’ll get the patch sets and source code. Linaro is now working on implementing support display, audio, and modem use cases.
In the announcement on the Linaro blog, Neil Amstrong further provides instructions explaining how to build a minimal AOSP image from scratch, and run it on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 development kit which does not seem to be available to the general public just yet. Lantronix would typically announce such a hardware development platform a couple of months after the processor is unveiled just like they did for the Snapdragon 888 Mobile Development Kit for instance. Most of that work is done on behalf of Qualcomm with a focus on Android, but that could also make Linux easier to port on recent Qualcomm Snapdragon hardware.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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