Qualcomm QDA dispute, HDMI 2.0, and GPU kernel work

Kernel graphics lists spent the day on a heated upstream dispute over a new Qualcomm accelerator driver, alongside large HDMI 2.0 and Rust GPU series. Emacs developers separately weighed a Flymake package that reopened quick-fix design questions.

Qualcomm QDA driver meets upstream resistance

A 15-patch v2 series proposing a new accel/qda driver for the Qualcomm DSP Accelerator drew sustained objection on dri-devel. Krzysztof argued the work duplicates the existing fastrpc path and should extend that code instead, citing upstream policy against parallel implementations. The heated exchange ran to 58 messages from seven participants and left the series unresolved.

HDMI 2.0 support advances in DW HDMI QP v10

A 69-patch v10 series adds HDMI 2.0 SCDC and scrambling to the DW HDMI QP transmitter on Rockchip, plus DRM helper refactors. Four participants kept a long technical thread alive across 105 messages. Automated review continued to flag repeated high-severity bugs in the large patch set.

Flymake-harper proposal reopens quick-fix design

A bid to add the flymake-harper package to GNU ELPA triggered broader discussion on emacs-devel about diagnostic quick-fix support inside Flymake. Seven participants exchanged 24 messages on how such fixes should integrate with the existing interface. The package would surface Harper diagnostics through Flymake rather than a separate path.

x86 MSR layer drops legacy 32-bit interfaces

A 13-patch v2 series removes the old 32-bit rdmsr and wrmsr macros after converting remaining users to 64-bit variants. Six participants reviewed the cleanup on dri-devel. The change simplifies the MSR API for kernels that no longer need the 32-bit entry points.

Nova-core gains PRAMIN window support

Version 2 of a 12-patch series adds PRAMIN window support and related Rust abstractions to the nova-core NVIDIA driver. Seven participants provided maintainer-level review on dri-devel. The work continues the effort to flesh out the Rust-based GPU driver stack.

Rust ID range reservation reaches v7

A v7 ten-patch set adds bitmap and IdPool bindings so Rust kernel code can reserve contiguous ID ranges. The facility is aimed at nova-core and drew comments from four participants. Contiguous allocation is a building block for device resource management in the new driver.

Dedicated ROCm compute backend proposed for QEMU

An AMD engineer proposed a ROCm GPU compute backend for QEMU that stays separate from the virglrenderer display path. The design aims to cut queue contention and support asynchronous events more cleanly. Three participants discussed the approach across 16 messages on dri-devel.

i915 shmem IOMMU large-object fixes

A v5 six-patch series improves memory management for large GEM allocations when i915 uses shmem together with IOMMU. The patches correct folio counting and scatterlist overflows. Five participants reviewed the technical fixes on dri-devel.