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Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite
- jamesy0ung 2y agoThis is very cool, sure the performance isn’t as good as Apple’s stuff but a reasonably performant processor with official Linux support is very cool
- darthrupert 2y agoApple Silicon is officially supported in Linux.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Tiberium 2y agoI think by "official" they meant support from the manufacturer.
- pavlov 2y agoLaptops with this chip are not shipping yet, so it’s a bit early to judge performance.
- threeseed 2y agoThere are some early benchmarks which put its performance behind iPad: - Snapdragon X Elite (2,574 / 12,562) - iPad M4 (3,630 / 13,060)
- sspiff 2y agoWhat benchmark is this? Geekbench? Geekbench is notoriously inconsistent across platforms. Not saying the iPad chip isn't faster, but I wouldn't judge by Geekbench scores alone...
- TiredOfLife 2y agoDo you have a source for Geekbench 6 being inconsistent across platforms?
- Xeamek 2y agoWhat device was this benchmark run on?
- pavlov 2y agoSince we’re talking about Linux support, the iPad benchmarks seem irrelevant. It’s a completely different kernel. Asahi Linux benchmarks on an M3 MacBook Air would be the closest thing here.
- saagarjha 2y agoThis is a CPU benchmark, not a test of what OS is running on it.
- pavlov 2y agoIt’s common to have 5-10% differences on benchmarks between Linux and Windows on the same hardware. iPadOS is even more different (for example, no swap, and many other similar fundamental optimizations for single-app usage).
- saagarjha 2y agoIt seems very unlikely that Geekbench would swap
- schaefer 2y agoAccording to the asahi website, support is currently available for m1 and m2 macs only[1]. Time will tell about m3 macs. [1]: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
- lozenge 2y agoYou can't benchmark a chip. It all depends on how much power and heat dissipation the actual device can provide. When the MacBook Pro comes out it should run circles round the iPad. And there are no Snapdragon X devices yet
- viraptor 2y agoSure you can. Measure performance when not thermally throttled and at the lowest speed / no boost. All real devices will fall in between those numbers.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoThe metric I'm interested in is mostly system performance, not CPU performance. How fast can a system compile my projects that is.
- betaby 2y agoFor me that list looks not that good compared to Asahi Linux for M1. No GPU, no camera, no suspend/resume.... I won't be spending my money on that platform until that sorted out. And judging from the other ARM platforms that means most likely never. Over-hyped and under-delivered.
- csande17 2y agoGiven that all those things are from the list of features they plan to ship in the next two kernel releases, "never" seems a little pessimistic. They aren't even selling laptops with this chip yet!
- maven29 2y agoThis is the schedule for upstreaming/"main-lining". Realistically, customers using these SoCs will be building on a forked linux BSP (Board Support Package) with all of these included. To be fair, these might be server platforms and Chromebooks, nobody is buying ARM notebooks to run their favourite FEM package.
- betaby 2y ago> Chromebooks Qualcomm has been shipping closed-source modules for Android mobiles for years. Support of the another similar platform changes nothing. Adreno GPUs exist for many years and upstream support is deplorable. Nothing was stopping Chromebooks making ARM/Adreno support in upstream ever. Page is a marketing and not a binding. Continue to downvote all you want. Qualcomm and open source doesn't belong to the same sentence - history of the alternative ROM for Androids is a living poof.
- zmk5 2y agoLooks like by next LTS (for kernel 6.10 and 6.11) we'll have some good support for these chips. I wonder if any OEMs will make any Linux laptops for us to buy.
- DeepYogurt 2y agoI really hope system76 takes a look at them
- geokon 2y agoThere is the Huawei Qingyun. It's about 500-600 USD on Taobao
- tadfisher 2y agoThat's Kirin, not Snapdragon
- darthrupert 2y agoI 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.
- geokon 2y agoI used a Huawei laptop and it's great. Huawei's build quality is significantly better than Asus. Not Apple level, but maybe half way there. Lenovo is also pretty good in quality (depending on the model though). Asus laptops are either cheap plastic or extremely thin metal that flexes - even on top end models. They also have a bad track record with support for their Tinkerboards. Not sure how the country of origin matters
- darthrupert 2y agoTechnically they might be fine, but there are geopolitical reasons to avoid chinese products.
- k8svet 2y agoI promise that for every one of these posts from me, I suppress the urge multiple other times. But it would be amazing to see things like this published as a Nix flake instead of some debian image chucked over the wall. Seeing the flake would be a definitive, at-a-glance, reference for what is upstream and what is being pulled from some BSP.
- DeathArrow 2y agoQualcomm hyped these CPUs since years showing results in benchmarks. We still don't have laptops with Snapdragon X Elite but meanwhile competition is releasing improved chips, see M4. I wonder if it won't be a little late when the laptops will be finally available to consumers.
- viraptor 2y agoThey 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)
- klausa 2y agoI think if you expect these to land in budget devices; you're going to be sorely disappointed.
- viraptor 2y agoI don't expect the first one to do that. But the next ones definitely. And it doesn't have to be "budget" straight away; there's a whole range of "normal" prices between that and Apple.
- cjk2 2y agoThey're going to end up in extremely shit high end devices which will be canned after 6 months of poor sales and bad reviews.
- mmaniac 2y agoIt's always the same song and dance with Windows on ARM.
- speed_spread 2y agoMicrosoft _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.
- spaintech 2y agoThis is great news for those invested in ARM CPUs. I, for one, purchased a Lenovo X13s when it first came out for around 1,900 EUR. Unfortunately, my experience with it on Windows was subpar, and it was even worse on Linux. At the same time, I bought my wife a MacBook Air (not sure if it was an M1 or M2), and it was snappy and very pleasant to use. I bought the Lenovo based on the hype from benchmarks, and it seemed like a capable system initially. However, I couldn't tolerate all its limitations and ended up returning it, as it performed no better than a Chromebook I had bought earlier. I'm hopeful that Snapdragon will offer an alternative ARM platform for laptops that can handle more than just browsing. As consumers, we need options, and the more, the merrier. I'm still undecided about the short-term success of Snapdragon. For now, I'm betting/waiting on the MacBook Air with an M4 as my daily driver, although I do prefer the Lenovo ThinkPad format.
- sidkshatriya 2y agoI 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. Entering on EL1 instead of EL2 seems to be be an outstanding issue with current Snapdragon based Linux laptops too. Can anybody correct me here if I'm wrong ? > In short, our roadmap for the next six months includes work in these areas: > End-to-end hardware video decoding, on Firefox and Chrome > Implementation of the libcamera-SoftISP camera solution > GPU and CPU performance optimizations > Power optimizations (Suspend/DCVS) > Making our firmware openly available (in Linux-firmware) > Access to easy installers (Ubuntu and Debian) "Making our firmware openly available (in Linux-firmware)" is a big one. How are firmware updates currently distributed ? People using Linux Laptops probably don't want to be signing into some Qualcomm website to get latest firmware updates. Also downloading firmware updates from some random link either would not instill a lot of confidence either. I feel these 2 big items need to be addressed before Linux on Snapdragon can be a truly attractive option.
- rjsw 2y ago> "Making our firmware openly available (in Linux-firmware)" is a big one. How are firmware updates currently distributed ? The "linux-firmware" repo is the standard place to put it, my reading is that Qualcomm are doing this in the right way.
- 1500100900 2y agoThe last time I checked, audio and video firmware wasn't there.
- sidkshatriya 2y ago> The "linux-firmware" repo is the standard place to put it, my reading is that Qualcomm are doing this in the right way. Indeed, Linux-firmware is the correct way to distribute. Qualcomm is currently _not_ doing this for all their Snapdragon Elite firmware (please read the linked article).
- jeffreygoesto 2y agoIt supports MTE, right? Can't wait for that to become mainstream.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoHopefully there's some decently performing AMD64 emulation available on linux, and it doesn't end up exclusive to windows. It's not as necessary as it is on most other OSs, bit it'd help pull along any random bits that don't have native binaries.
- TwoNineFive 2y agoAs someone who has worked with Qualcomm extensively and developed products based on their QSDK for years, this thread is way too optimistic. Qualcomm is heavy on sales and marketing and all of these promises have been made before on previous silicon releases. Their management hates open-source and only permits what is absolutely necessary. I am not hopeful for the future on these devices. They will be locked down and closed source in various ways that people just don't know about yet.