Qualcomm Upstreaming Initial GPU Support For Snapdragon X2 Elite In Linux 6.19

Back in September the Qualcomm X2 Elite SoCs were announced for next-gen Windows 11 on Arm laptops. Since then some initial X2 Elite enablement patches for the Linux kernel have arrived and for the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel more of that work will reach mainline. Excitingly, Linux 6.19 is now bringing GPU and display support for the Adreno X2-85 found within the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC.

Rob Clark of Qualcomm sent out the initial MSM DRM driver feature changes planned for Linux 6.19. Excitingly is the GPU and display support for the Snapdragon X2 Elite laptop SoC with the X2-85 GPU.

This is Qualcomm’s 8th Gen GPU design and similarly there is this draft merge request now pending in Mesa for wiring up the Adreno Gen8 “Kaanapali” and “Glymur” hardware support.

That Mesa support is initially for the Freedreno Gallium3D (OpenGL) driver while support for the Turnip Vulkan driver will come in time. Rob Clark mentioned in that Mesa merge request:

“This series adds initial support for adreno gen8, including a840 (Kaanapali, aka Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5) and x2-85 (Glymur, aka Snapdragon x2). Currently deqp-gles2/3 pass and deqp-gles31 is at >99.9% pass (~30 remaining fails). Desktop UI is functional (ie. gnome-shell, chrome browser, etc), and games such as supertuxkart appear to be fine.

Remaining bug fixes and performance features (lrz/etc), and turnip support will come over time, as they are ready.

The patch that adds the device table entries is still marked WIP, mainly because the split of device info into a6xx/a7xx/a8xx sub-structs is becoming awkward. I think I’d like to flatten this.”

Along with that Adreno X2-85 GPU support for the MSM DRM driver, the pull request also includes the Adreno 840 support found within the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC. But for that Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 support it’s only the GPU and the display enablement won’t land until a later kernel cycle.

The MSM pull request also brings Adreno 612 GPU support, quad-pipe support in the DPU driver code for allowing higher resolution displays, DisplayPort improvements, and other changes.