The Mainline Linux Kernel To Finally Support The Google Tensor GS101 SoC & Pixel 6

The Google Tensor GS101 SoC launched in 2021 with the Google Pixel 6 smartphone. More than two years later the mainline Linux kernel is finally to see upstream support with the forthcoming Linux 6.8 kernel cycle.

The GS101 "Whitechapel" SoC as a reminder is an octa-core processor with a mix of Cortex X1 / A76 / X55 cores, Mali-G78 MP20 graphics, and is built on a 5nm LPE Samsung process. After going through a number of rounds of code review, the initial Google Tensor GS101 support along with the Pixel 6 smartphone Device Tree support is finally set to appear in the mainline Linux kernel rather than being found in just the various Android/AOSP downstream kernel sources.

The initial GS101 / Google Tensor patches along with the Pixel 6 DT has made it into the Samsung SoC tree's "for-next" branch ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.8 cycle.

With the Pixel 6 "Oriole" support it's been tested on this to-be-mainlined code that it can at least boot with a minimal Busybox initramfs and successfully reaches a shell. In the recent patch series for this Tensor/GS101 SoC support and Pixel 6 board coverage it was noted:

The gs101 / Tensor SoC is also used in Pixel6a (bluejay) and Pixel 6 Pro (raven) phones. Currently DT is added for the gs101 SoC and Oriole. As you can see from the patches the SoC is based on a Samsung Exynos SoC, and therefore lots of the low level Exynos drivers and bindings can be re-used.

The support added in this series consists of:
* cpus
* pinctrl
* CCF implementation of cmu_top, cmu_misc & cmu_apm
* watchdog
* USI uart
* gpio

This is enough to boot through to a busybox initramfs and shell using an upstream kernel though :) More platform support will be added over the following weeks and months.

Better late than never. It's also with Linux 6.8 where the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be able to boot the mainline kernel.