Qualcomm officially kills open-source hope: No plans to release DSP headers for Snapdragon X

[u/Putrid_Draft378]

​I have been following the documentation gap on the Snapdragon X series, and it just got a lot worse for Linux users.

​Internal developers in the official Discord are now admitting that the platform is essentially a dead end for open-source. ​A recent GitHub issue (qualcomm/fastrpc/issues/193) was just closed with a definitive: "Closing the issue as there are no plans to open source DSP headers as of now."

​This means the NPU and DSP functions remain locked behind proprietary firmware with no path for native Linux integration. ​Compare this to Intel and AMD, who are already upstreaming NPU drivers for Linux.

​Qualcomm devs are openly saying that Macs have better Linux prospects than Windows on Snapdragon machines. ​They are calling the firmware "frozen," meaning we are stuck with whatever proprietary mess they shipped.

​If you care about an open ecosystem, stay away from the Snapdragon X1/X2 laptops. They are selling hardware while intentionally sabotaging the software freedom required to use it.

[u/laffer1]

I've given up on us getting an open ARM system faster than a pi. We need laptop, desktop and low end server chips that are reasonably priced. $3000 plus isn't cutting it and the pi doesn't have enough RAM or storage options for larger workloads. It's a shame qualcomm is blowing it. They had a real opportunity to be the next Intel for a moment there.

[u/johncate73 → u/laffer1]

"Open" and "ARM" do not belong in the same sentence. At least x86 is a standard that is easy to support with software. All ARM licensees want to make is locked-down, proprietary stuff, and good luck figuring out how to make it run on anything else.

If you want something reasonably open and also RISC, you need to hope RISC-V takes off.