Linux 5.16 Arm SoC Changes Bring-Up The Snapdragon 690, Other Hardware

All of the Arm SoC/platform changes were merged on Wednesday evening for the Linux 5.16 kernel cycle.

It's another busy cycle bringing up more Arm platforms with the mainline Linux kernel with multiple new SoCs and boards enabled. Some of the highlights of this work for Linux 5.16 are listed below.

DeviceTree updates include:

- Apple M1 support for the PCI Express and Pinctrl drivers now that those are mainlined. The Apple M1 is "getting a bit closer to a usable system out of the box" with the mainline kernel.

- Qualcomm support for the Snapdragon 690 (SM6350) and SM7225 SoCs. The Snapdragon 690 is one of the company's mid-range SoCs for Android tablets and smartphones that was announced last year.

- The Qualcomm changes also enable 11 new smartphones for the mainline kernel and three more Google Chromebooks.

- Samsung's changes now support the ExynosAutov9, an automotive variant for their Exynos SoC.

- Also in the automotive world, Linux 5.16 adds support for the NXP S32G2 automotive SoC.

- Rockchip RK3566 / RK3688 SoC support and various new Rockchip development boards now supported.

- A new board support in the Intel Arria SoC FPGA family. That new board is the Enclustra Mercury AA1.

- Improved Mediatek MT81xx SoC support for Chromebooks.

SoC driver changes include:

- Mediatek drivers now supporting the MT8192 SoC. The Mediatek MT8192 / Kompanio 820 is designed for use by various Google Chromebooks.

- Support for allowing more SoC drivers to be built as loadable kernel modules.

- Many other minor improvements and clean-ups.

Lastly, SoC changes continue the "eternal cleanup" of the TI OMAP2 platform code. The SoC code also adds new SoC support for the STMicroelectronics stm32mp13 and Microchip lan966 with both building off prior SoC code paths.

In related news, the ARM64 changes also already landed for Linux 5.16. ARM64 architecture changes for Linux 5.16 include supporting the ARMv8.6 timer extensions, Kernel Address Sanitizer (KASAN) support for asymmetric MTE configurations, support for leaving the MMU enabled during Kexec relocation to improve its speed, and other low-level changes.