Msm8953 For Arm64 Driver -

(Qualcomm Snapdragon 625) is an SoC widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems

. Driving this hardware requires distinct approaches depending on whether you are working with official vendor (downstream) kernels or modern open-source (mainline) Linux. Key Driver Categories for MSM8953

Development for MSM8953 drivers typically falls into three main buckets: Mainline Kernel Support : Community efforts like the msm8953-mainline GitHub

provide work-in-progress patches for running standard Linux kernels on Snapdragon 625 devices. PostmarketOS Drivers : This project maintains Snapdragon 625 driver status

, tracking support for critical components like GPU (Adreno 506), Audio (Cajon-v2), and the Venus video encoder/decoder. Android Downstream Drivers

: These are the original vendor drivers found in repositories like Xiaomi MSM8953 Android kernel sources msm8953 for arm64 driver

. They offer full hardware support but are often tied to older kernel versions (e.g., 3.18 or 4.9). Building ARM64 Drivers

Compiling drivers for the MSM8953 platform requires an ARM64-capable toolchain and a specific environment setup. msm8953-mainline - GitHub

2. Kernel support (upstream vs vendor)

• Mainline Linux historically lags in full MSM support; many Qualcomm-specific drivers live in vendor trees (Qualcomm/Exynos/msm branches) and Android common kernels.
• For ARM64 builds, use a kernel with CONFIG_SOC_QCOM and MSM platform drivers enabled.
• Typical kernel base: Android common kernel (e.g., msm-4.4 or msm-4.9, later 4.14/4.19) or Qualcomm's forks. Upstream support has improved, but GPU, modem, and some power-management pieces often remain vendor-specific.

11. Example minimal DTS snippet (conceptual)

/ 
  compatible = "qcom,msm8953";
  soc 
    compatible = "qcom,msm8953-soc";
    reg = <0x0 0x...>;
    clocks = <&gcc ...>;
  ;
  kgsl@... 
    compatible = "qcom,kgsl";
    reg = <...>;
    interrupt-parent = <&msm_gic>;
  ;
  mdss@...  /* display controller */ ;
  mdss_panel@0  compatible = "manufacturer,panel-model"; /* timing */ ;
;

Missing in Mainline

• Modem / IPA (mobile data) – no upstream driver (requires closed firmware + mhi/net).
• WiFi/BT (WCNSS) – requires wcn36xx driver + firmware, but integration incomplete for this exact SoC.
• Peripheral Authentication / Secure World – not relevant for Linux.
• Hardware crypto engine (qce) – some support exists but not fully validated for MSM8953.

2.4 Camera (ISP – Qualcomm Camera Stack)

The Image Signal Processor (ISP) on MSM8953 is the most painful driver for ARM64. Qualcomm’s camera HAL (mm-camera) is a monolithic user-space blob that expects 32-bit pointers.

• ARM64 status: 🔴 Problematic
• Typical setup:
  Legacy camera HAL (e.g., camera.msm8953.so) is 32-bit. On a 64-bit system, you cannot directly load it.
• Workarounds:
  • Use libcamera (emerging, but immature for MSM8953)
  • Run camera HAL in a 32-bit cameraserver process (requires SELinux adjustments)
  • Backport the camx (Camera eXtension) HAL from SDM660 – partially possible but time-consuming.

5. Building a Minimal ARM64 MSM8953 Driver Example

Let’s demonstrate a simple virtual character driver for MSM8953 on ARM64. This logs the CPU architecture at insmod time.

// msm8953_arm64_dummy.c
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
#include <linux/init.h>
static int __init dummy_init(void)
#ifdef CONFIG_ARM64
pr_info("MSM8953 ARM64 driver loaded on 64-bit kernel\n");
#else
pr_info("MSM8953 driver loaded on non-ARM64 kernel (check config)\n");
#endif
return 0;
 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625) is an SoC widely used
static void __exit dummy_exit(void)
pr_info("MSM8953 ARM64 driver unloaded\n");

module_init(dummy_init);
module_exit(dummy_exit);
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");

Makefile for ARM64 cross-compilation:

obj-m += msm8953_arm64_dummy.o
KERNELDIR ?= ~/android/kernel/msm-4.9
CROSS_COMPILE := aarch64-linux-android-
CC := $(CROSS_COMPILE)gcc Mainline Linux historically lags in full MSM support;
all:
make -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) ARCH=arm64 modules
clean:
make -C $(KERNELDIR) M=$(PWD) ARCH=arm64 clean

Build and test on an MSM8953 device running an ARM64 kernel.

Step 2: Patch Kernel for 64-bit Vendor Support

Add these config flags to your defconfig:

CONFIG_ARM64=y
CONFIG_COMPAT=y          # Enables 32-bit userspace compatibility
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_IPC=y
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"

The COMPAT flag allows 32-bit drivers to communicate with 64-bit kernel via ioctl wrappers.