Neil Armstrong

Mainline Linux & U-boot Contributor & Maintainer
Open-Source, Embedded SW/HW enthousiast
Embedded Linux Engineer @LinaroOrg

Open-Source Contributions
Linux, U-Boot, Zephyr RTOS, MbedTLS, OpenEmbedded
2026-02-02

Achievement unlocked: present on an actual production device, step up after preseting on the devkit 2y ago! Switching back to Plasma mobile and running games, live at #FOSDEM !

fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event

2026-01-27

I am thrilled to be back at FOSDEM. It is a fantastic opportunity to meet with the open source community and connect with fellow developers at such a great conference!

Please join me this Saturday in the FOSS on Mobile devroom. I will be presenting the technical evolution of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, demonstrating how we achieved full mainline support—from power management to the Adreno GPU—running on actual product hardware.

I look forward to seeing you there.
Saturday, 18:30 | Room UB4.132

#FOSDEM #Linux #UBoot #OpenSource #Snapdragon #Mainline

Neil Armstrong boosted:
Linaro LimitedLinaroLtd
2025-09-25

Collaboration and communication are at the heart of Linux kernel development. In the second part of our series, we explore how to work effectively with the Linux kernel community.

Read more here 👉 lnkd.in/eYgrqWZs

Neil Armstrong boosted:
2025-05-18

my talk "U-Boot: a quick and painless bootloader for Qualcomm SoCs" with @superna9999 is now published

we tell the story of Qualcomm support in U-Boot from its simple beginnings to the modern generic platform we have today

resources.linaro.org/en/resour

2024-09-10

@spider note that it’s possible to upstream some overlays, like support for pluggable hardware!

2024-09-10

I’m happy to announce the Amlogic ARM64 Device Tree is now fully documented in linux-next, ready for v6.12!

Since the beginning of Device Tree on Linux, we documented how it should be written so drivers could know what to expect, it’s called “bindings”, it’s a sort of “contract” between Device Tree and drivers.

But those were written in human readable open text format, without any automated way to verify Device Tree files. There were numerous attempts, but ultimately Rob Herring leveraged JSON Schema [1] into “dtschema” [2] leading to this patch serie lore.kernel.org/all/2018100516.

Thus “dtschema” made it possible to write bindings in YAML and the developed scripts would convert Device Tree in YAML and run a validation with JSON Schema validation. This was merged in end of 2018 then conversion of the text files in YAML files started.

For reference, there were 3278 text bindings in Linux 4.20 git tree, in today’s Linux next for v6.12 only 1250 text files remains but there’s 4345 yaml files now! In addition to the transition to yaml bindings, new platforms were introduced using the new format.

Around one year ago, I upstreamed support for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and it was fully documented from day 1, and most of the changes was yaml bindings change since the SoC was mainly an upgrade from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 I helped upstream 2 years ago.

Let’s go back to Amlogic, were I started converting the text file to yaml bindings in August 2019 (see [3]), and finally ended the transition early this month with the patch [4]. This makes the Amlogic ARM64 Device Trees join fully documented along other platforms like Samsung Exynos

If you want to know more about Device Tree validation, you can look at my @LinaroLtd colleague @krzk talk he did in this year's #EOSS in Seattle sched.co/1aBEf!

Now the links:
[1] json-schema.org/
[2] github.com/devicetree-org/dt-s
[3] lore.kernel.org/all/2019080113
[4] lore.kernel.org/all/20240905-t
Thanks for reading !

2024-04-02

Nearly 8 years later I’ll be speaking again about why it’s not to late to upstream your legacy Linux based platform in 2 weeks time at #EOSS24 #ELCNA @ Seattle ! eoss24.sched.com/event/1aBEe/n

2024-02-05

@ollieparanoid @superna9999 but it worked just fine!!!

Neil Armstrong boosted:
2024-02-05

Plot twist at the end of the great talk "Mainline Linux on Qualcomm SoCs, are we here now ?" by @superna9999: the presentation was running on a snapdragon devboard all along! Here is the view from the side of the stage, showing how it was barely possible to connect it to power and HDMI at the same time 😀

fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event

#fosdem #fosdem2024 #linuxmobile

Neil standing at the stage, a big red arrow points at the devboard he used for the presentation, being connected to power on one side and HDMI on the other, it is on the edge of the table so it works with cable lengths.
2024-02-04

Spent a nice weekend at #FOSDEM2024 ! Nice to see so much people attending this volunteer-based conference! It’s really a special and very enjoyable place to speak about Open Source.
I was happy to be selected to speak to this year’s edition in the FOSS on Mobile devroom, thx to all the organizers!

Neil Armstrong boosted:
2024-02-04

just finished my #FOSDEM talk U-Boot for modern Qualcomm phones. Great view from the stage with @ollieparanoid

recording will be available here

fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event

a selfie of me and @ollieparanoid on stage in the FOSS on mobile devroom at FOSDEM. it's a medium sized university theatre hall seating over 100 people with more people stood at the sides
Neil Armstrong boosted:
2024-02-04
@cas is giving their talk #FOSDEM #FOSSDEM2024
2024-02-02

I made it this year, I’m in Brussels for #FOSDEM ! Join me tomorrow in room h1309 at 11h30 CEST for my talk about the mainline Linux state of Qualcomm SoCs and @LinaroLtd engineers work to achieve current state fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event

2024-01-22

Supported features:
- 8 Cores & CPU Frequency Scaling
- Low Speed Peripherals (UART, I2C, SPI)
- GPIO/Pinctl & PMICs
- Crypto & Random Accelerators
- UFS + Inline Crypto Engine
- SDCArd
- USB2.0 + USB3.0 + USB-C Power Delivery
- Display Engine (DSI)
- Modem IP offloading (IPA)
- Temperature Sensors
- Bus Interconnect Scaling

2024-01-22

All patches were merged in v6.8-rc1, this means Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 support is now upstream!
Downloading Linux master branch and building it for arm64 with default config now boots on the Qualcomm Reference Devices, now it's ready to be ported to the just announced phones !

# uname -a
Linux qemuarm64 6.8.0-rc1 #142 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jan 22 09:43:05 CET 2024 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Neil Armstrong boosted:
2024-01-22

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!

$ uname -a
Linux qemuarm64 6.7.0-rc4-next-20231211-gbbd220ce4e29 #83 SMP PREEMPT Mon Dec 11 09:26:08 CET 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Neil Armstrong boosted:
2023-12-21
FYI, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (X1E80100) now boots to shell with today's -next.

More support is already sent on the list for review:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/?q=X1E80100

And here is a public branch with all support currently available on top of -next:
https://git.codelinaro.org/abel.vesa/linux/-/tree/x1e80100-next

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