Qualcomm Rolls Out ~110k Lines Of New Kernel Code For Snapdragon 845 Display Support

[boxie]

There is a Chromebook with Snapdragon 845 in development, this is way Google is involved here. 96Boards from Linaro was a nice push for Qualcomm to star upstreaming 400, 600 and 800 series of SOCs. One can run upstream packages for Dragonboard 410c. Someone doing a Chromebook with Snapdragon 845 will push all of these efforts to the max. Also Qualcomm learned that in server market everything must be upstream (e.g. otherwise you cannot get RHEL support).

Qualcomm SOCS are becoming one of the best high-end upstream supported ones. Heck, you even get open source GPU driver.

That Chromebook is on a shopping list, but sadly it will take long time before it hits the market.

I am happy to see that Qualcomm are becoming another Intel/AMD with their driver support. I hope this pushes nvidia to realise that being upstream is better.

[juno]

Where can I find a list of Android phones that are able to run the upstream kernel out of the box? (besides the Nexus phones)

Pretty sure you've just completed that list.

[CTown]

Where can I find a list of Android phones that are able to run the upstream kernel out of the box? (besides the Nexus phones)

PostMarketOS devs have a list on their blog. They list these six devices with at least PARTIAL mainline: Google Nexus 5, Fairphone 2, and Xperia Z1, Nexus 7 (2013), Teclast X80 Pro, and the Xperia Z2 Tablet.

I see bshah as credited for the Nexus 5 bring up. Does that mean Hallium has gotten merged into PostMarketOS? Not that I would be mad, Android devices running on mainline is quite the goal and this project looks like they can make it happen!

[KRiloshart]

I wish Qualcomm's attitude doesn't change after (if) Broadcom buys Qualcomm. But...

[HeadsUpHigh]

Whaaaaat? Is it finally time for upstream arm SoCs?

This is pretty amazing that Qualcomm is now attempting to upstream drivers for a lot of their hardware. Hopefully this starts a trend with other big commercial ARM SoC vendors, where we eventually get to the point where the upstream kernels can run unmodified on popular ARM devices (i.e. Android phones, tablets, etc).

Yea now that their patents expired they do not have to be afraid that their drivers will leak some patent violation their competitors might exploit against them so they are willing to do this.

[Ardje]

This is pretty amazing that Qualcomm is now attempting to upstream drivers for a lot of their hardware. Hopefully this starts a trend with other big commercial ARM SoC vendors, where we eventually get to the point where the upstream kernels can run unmodified on popular ARM devices (i.e. Android phones, tablets, etc).

Actually Qualcomm is pretty lagging... Samsung has for a long time been number 1 (as kernel contributor != intel arch, Samsung has been in the top 5 for years). Ti is also big. I think we can even say that nvidia was pretty good, but only on ARM.
I assume that Qualcomms 100k lines will be rejected, until AMD and Samsung also can work with the same framework. Or better: I think it should be rejected unless it is a generic solution that will work for AMD, exynos, Pi's broadcom, rockchip, win etc. too...
Anyway: the status quo is that most changes to the current mechanics are usually rejected. There is a good reason of course, but it is also the only reason why we did not see any generic drm support for videomixers (much like the XV-overlays card's used to have 10 years ago). Exynos seems to have support if you build it as v4l device, but I've never ventured that way.
But it's a first that Qualcomm is pro-actively trying to support instead of rejecting. Now if they stop patent trolling, it might become a healthy company.

[Ardje]

Where can I find a list of Android phones that are able to run the upstream kernel out of the box? (besides the Nexus phones)

There are none.
Because vanilla linux has no support for the infrastructure needed to connect all drivers. And despite various attempts to make that infrastructure, it still does not exist.
I think the exynos 4412 can now be compiled with a vanilla linux, and the only thing you will be lacking is the opensource kernel part of the mali driver. That gives you full support over hardware encoders and decoders, scalers, converters, encryption. It does not give you access to hdcp, and afaik, you will need to write you own application if you want to use the video mixer.
Currently vanilla linux does not support chaining drm devices so you can't rotate your framebuffer, scale, convert color and mix it using the videomixer with another framebuffer.
And there are more things that vanilla linux still has no support for, and until that time you can forget about an android phone that runs a vanilla kernel with full hardware support.

[Brophen]

Maybe someday we can see generic ARM images for distros? That'll be the day

[Vistaus]

That seems like a lot of code for that functionality.

I wonder why the first reply on any Phoronix article is *always* a critical or negative one.

[Vistaus]

Where can I find a list of Android phones that are able to run the upstream kernel out of the box? (besides the Nexus phones)

I don't think there are many, 'cause on a lot of tech sites, whenever there's talk about the Android *kernel*, 99% of the time people are complaining that Android devices are running outdated kernels because of specific drivers.