In May 2024, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon X series of chips, including Snapdragon XPro and Snapdragon XElite. These chips are provided for desktop devices and are mainly used in notebook computers. For example, Copilot+PC uses this type of chip.
At that time, Qualcomm also detailed in a blog what measures the company had taken to make Linux a first-class operating system on Snapdragon X series laptops. But now when Linux users purchased these laptops, they discovered that the situation was overturned.
The recently released LinuxKernelDeviceTree patch has completely disabled the GPU module on Qualcomm Snapdragon XElite. When the GPU cannot work, it may seriously affect the normal use of users.
Why does the kernel patch disable the GPU module? Essentially, Qualcomm only knew to issue a press release to promote it but did not disclose the limitations, because the Snapdragon XElite GPU requires something called a ZAP shader to function.
A patch posted by kernel member Dmitry Baryshkov on July 15th shows:
The GPU on the X1E80100 requires a ZAP shader file to be used, which cannot be used by default since the file is signed by the OEM key. Disable the GPU node and delete the firmware name file from x1e80100.dtsi. Devices that are not fused and use OEM keys can be turned on manually.
According to the LinuxKernel email description, the ZAP shader is necessary, but by default the GPU starts in a dedicated "safe" mode, so it must be turned off. As for the OEM key signature of the ZAP shader, Qualcomm does not seem to have mentioned it before.
The current situation is that the GPU of all Snapdragon XElite laptops installed with Linux will be disabled after installing the latest kernel patch. For Qualcomm, if even the GPU cannot work properly, it will be completely meaningless to make Linux a first-class operating system on the Snapdragon X platform.