Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Will Be Able To Boot On The Mainline Linux 6.8 Kernel

All the pieces have been aligned that the mainline Linux 6.8 kernel should be able to boot on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC without any out-of-tree patches being necessary.

Embedded Linux developer Neil Armstrong posted on Mastodon that all the relevant pieces are queued in their respective "-next" branches that will allow Linux 6.8 mainline to boot on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3:

A new milestone has been achieved, the @Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 now boots from linux-next defconfig with no additional changes!

This means all necessary changes are in the Maintainers git trees and will be sent to Linus in the next Linux merge window planned in 2 or 3 weeks!

Granted, this is just about the SoC support and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 devices of upcoming smartphones/devices will still need their respective Device Tree files added to the kernel along with any other peripheral driver support or pieces like the Qualcomm AI engine we haven't seen open-source patches for yet.

There's been various pieces of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 support going mainline in prior cycles while Linux 6.8 appears to get the core support over the finish line. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was announced back in October from Hawaii for powering next-generation flagship smartphones. Qualcomm describes the hardware as "our first mobile platform meticulously designed with generative AI in mind."