Qualcomm Is Bringing Linux Support To Snapdragon X2 Series

On the second day of the keynote, Qualcomm announced that it will be providing Linux support for the Snapdragon X2 Series and X2 Plus platforms. In response to developer requests, the company intends to offer support for both Ubuntu and Debian operating systems by the end of this year. Development of this support has been progressing in stages, starting with the essential components needed for production-level work on devices.

The primary focus is on upstreaming drivers that unlock real workloads, such as Qualcomm Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) support via fastRPC for on-device AI inference, GPU support through Freedreno, Turnip, and Rusticl open-source Mesa drivers for Qualcomm Adreno graphics and compute.

To ensure compatibility and functionality, Qualcomm Linux will support systemd-boot as the Universal extensible firmware interface (UEFI) boot manager to load and boot the Linux kernel. It will also enable the connection of various peripherals, including low and high-speed I/O devices such as USB, PCIe, and Qualcomm universal peripheral (UP) serial engine, which supports UART, I2C, and SPI.

Furthermore, the support will include graphics and display capabilities, enabling desktop UI, browser acceleration, graphics workloads, and GPU compute. AI acceleration will be facilitated by the FastRPC driver upstreaming, which allows access to the Hexagon NPU for local inference workloads. The company will also provide system-wide power management support, ensuring overall system stability across all subsystems.