News: 0001577110

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Select Qualcomm X Elite Laptops Seeing IRIS Video Acceleration On Linux

([Hardware] 6 Hours Ago X Elite)


Adding to the list of feature caveats around the different [1]Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops and the varying Linux state is video acceleration support. But patches were posted this week by a Linaro engineer enabling hardware accelerated video playback for two X Elite laptop models.

Linaro engineer Stephan Gerhold posted the patches enabling IRIS video acceleration decoding for the X1 Elite Compute Reference Design (CRD) and the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s. The CRD support isn't too useful for consumers themselves. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s continues to benefit as one of the best supported X Elite laptops under Linux with even having firmware files upstream in linux-firmware.git.

The patches posted on Thursday add the IRIS video acceleration code for the DeviceTree used on the Qualcomm reference board as well as the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s. Besides the DT support, there is also an IRIS firmware requirement.

These new patches for those having either X1E platform can find them on the [2]LKML . In time hopefully the other popular X Elite laptop models will also see this support in place.

It was back in Linux 6.15 earlier this year that [3]the Qualcomm IRIS video decode driver was upstreamed . In initial form a V4L2 video driver with H.264 decode.

In case you missed it for more details on the recent X Elite Linux experience, see the recent tests in [4]Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Linux Performance Improving But Short Of AMD Ryzen & Intel Core Ultra .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x1e-september

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250911-x1e-iris-dt-v1-0-63caf0fd202c@linaro.org/

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-Media-Subsystem

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x1e-september



phoronix

feature, n:
A surprising property of a program. Occasionaly documented. To
call a property a feature sometimes means the author did not
consider that case, and the program makes an unexpected, though
not necessarily wrong response. See BUG. "That's not a bug, it's
a feature!" A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.