Our partnership with MediaTek is a testament to the power of collaboration between industry leaders and the open source ecosystem. We’re happy to see that this has opened up new opportunities for supporting upstream Linux on the MediaTek-powered IoT boards and Chromebook Plus laptops. This allows the community to enjoy it, and system integrators to leverage security updates, functionality, and performance of both the mainline Linux kernel and common Linux distributions, like Debian and others, across these platforms.

Let’s dive into our latest advancements in upstream support for MediaTek boards!

IoT, AIoT, and Edge Computing space:

Although basic console boot support for boards powered by the MediaTek Genio 1200 (MT8395) has been available for some time, there was a notable lack of support for most other basic and advanced functionalities available in these SoCs and boards. After all, having a basic shell without any support for connectivity (in terms of both networking and buses, like PCI-Express, USB, and others) doesn’t really make a system actually useful. In response to that, we improved functionality for already upstream-supported boards and added support for new ones, allowing the booting of major Linux distributions on Mainline Linux kernel releases.

Genio 1200 EVK and Radxa NIO-12L boards (MT8395 SoC)

These boards can now boot a Mainline Linux kernel without any out-of-tree patches while providing support for almost all of the features that are available by hardware. That includes the UFS Storage (found on the Radxa NIO-12L board), SoC-integrated Audio DSP, JPEG and Video hardware encoders and decoders, the ARM Mali GPU on the fully open source Panfrost driver, as well as DSI and DisplayPort displays. The new HDMI controller found in newer Genio SoCs is also completely ready for upstream and waiting for a maintainer to take our fully working, fully community-reviewed driver.

Genio 510 and Genio 700 EVK (MT8365 SoC)

We are amazed as we had the opportunity to upstream support for those boards from the ground up! These boards can also take advantage of the same level of support as the Genio 1200 ones, with their ability to boot the latest Mainline Linux kernel with an advanced level of hardware support, with eMMC/SD/SDIO, UFS, PCI-Express, USB, JPEG and Video hardware encoders/decoders, DSI, DisplayPort, Embedded DisplayPort displays, Mali GPU, and more!

New IoT SoCs join the MediaTek lineup: Genio 520 and Genio 720

As part of our journey with the IoT Team at MediaTek, work is underway to support the new Genio 520 (MT8371) and Genio 720 (MT8391) SoCs and their EVK boards in the upstream Linux kernel and major Linux distributions.

The MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 powerhouse goes upstream! In our renewed partnership with MediaTek and Google, we are thrilled to announce that we are in the process of bringing the new MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 (MT8196) processor, a derivative of the Dimensity 9400 (MT6991) SoC, powering the latest Chromebook Plus laptops, to the upstream!

As of today, all of the new clock controller hardware and partial power domain support have been successfully upstreamed, along with the Modem-specific power domains code in response to community interest in bringing up the baseband found in both legacy and newer Dimensity SoCs.

As we plan to bring full support for the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor to the upstream, we are currently in the process of upstreaming additional components, including (but not limited to):

• A software implementation to communicate with the new Hardware Voter MCU in next-gen MediaTek SoCs
• Support for the new SPMI controller found in Kompanio Ultra 910, adhering to the newer MIPI SPMI 2.0 specification
• Power Management ICs (PMICs) MT6316, MT6363, and MT6373 found on the newest Chromebook Plus platforms.

In the coming weeks, basic devicetrees will be sent to the upstream mailing lists to enable Chromebook Plus laptops to boot on an upstream kernel, after which we plan to start working on a new implementation to support the DisplayPort Controller embedded in these new SoCs.

Honorable mention goes to the community!

We’re also excited to see Linux community members from the autonomous “MentallySaneMainliners” group upstreaming support for MediaTek Smartphone platforms, in particular, the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 (MT6878) SoC powering the Nothing “tetris” CMF Phone 1. This is an effort to take advantage of the latest advancements and security updates in the upstream Linux kernel, helping to reduce e-waste by extending the life of these devices through software longevity.

In conclusion

As our collaboration with MediaTek continues to flourish, we pause to celebrate these achievements alongside the Open Source community. We still look forward to maintaining the advantages of Free and Open Source (FOSS) software and community support to both legacy and new MediaTek-powered platforms.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

P.S.: Don’t forget to visit our MediaTek Upstreaming Wiki containing general information as well as the upstream SoC and Board support matrix, and to check out our MediaTek Upstream Integration Kernel tree!