Linux WMI Driver Gets Ready To Support ACPI-Based ARM64 Laptops
([Arm] 2 Hours Ago
ACPI WMI Driver)
- Reference: 0001646947
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-ACPI-WMI-Driver-ARM64
- Source link:
Linux developer Armin Wolf sent out a set of patches today for enabling AArch64 support for the ACPI Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) driver to work on AArch64 in no longer being bound to x86/x86_64. This is a step toward the long goal of being able to support modern Windows on ARM laptops via ACPI on Linux.
Going back to the aarch64-laptops project in circa 2019 it was known some Windows 10 ARM laptops make use of WMI similar to x86_64 laptops. There have been [1]patches for years to allow the Linux WMI driver in turn to build on AArch64 (ARM64) rather than just being limited to x86/x86_64 architectures, but they have yet to be mainlined.
Armin Wolf has taken to creating a new set of patches for bringing the WMI driver to ARM64 for bettering modern ARM laptops on Linux. He explained in today's [2]patch series :
"The aarch64-laptops project found out that some Windows-on-Arm notebooks contain WMI-ACPI mapping devices (PNP0C14) that work exactly like on x86. Those devices however are currently not supported by the WMI driver core due to only supporting x86.
The first patch removes this restriction and allows the WMI driver core to run on all architectures that support ACPI. The second patch updates the acpi-video driver to take advantage of the improved support for architectures other than x86, and the last patch enables the generic WMI BMOF driver to support aarch64 as well.
All patches have been tested on a ACPI-based aarch64 VM and work just fine."
Hopefully this time the WMI driver support for AArch64 will make it to the upstream kernel.
In case you missed it, some other news from a few weeks back and somewhat related is a proposal for [3]a DeviceTree-ACPI hybrid mode for bettering Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops on Linux . It was also mentioned there that future Windows on ARM Snapdragon laptops will ideally be ACPI-only and not require Device Trees.
[1] https://lists.linaro.org/archives/list/aarch64-laptops@lists.linaro.org/thread/U2IZENSIOOHZHGXVN7GM5HX5O3FD5KCF/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-acpi/20260716234538.1303811-1-W_Armin@gmx.de/
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/DT-ACPI-Hybrid-Mode-Linux
Going back to the aarch64-laptops project in circa 2019 it was known some Windows 10 ARM laptops make use of WMI similar to x86_64 laptops. There have been [1]patches for years to allow the Linux WMI driver in turn to build on AArch64 (ARM64) rather than just being limited to x86/x86_64 architectures, but they have yet to be mainlined.
Armin Wolf has taken to creating a new set of patches for bringing the WMI driver to ARM64 for bettering modern ARM laptops on Linux. He explained in today's [2]patch series :
"The aarch64-laptops project found out that some Windows-on-Arm notebooks contain WMI-ACPI mapping devices (PNP0C14) that work exactly like on x86. Those devices however are currently not supported by the WMI driver core due to only supporting x86.
The first patch removes this restriction and allows the WMI driver core to run on all architectures that support ACPI. The second patch updates the acpi-video driver to take advantage of the improved support for architectures other than x86, and the last patch enables the generic WMI BMOF driver to support aarch64 as well.
All patches have been tested on a ACPI-based aarch64 VM and work just fine."
Hopefully this time the WMI driver support for AArch64 will make it to the upstream kernel.
In case you missed it, some other news from a few weeks back and somewhat related is a proposal for [3]a DeviceTree-ACPI hybrid mode for bettering Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops on Linux . It was also mentioned there that future Windows on ARM Snapdragon laptops will ideally be ACPI-only and not require Device Trees.
[1] https://lists.linaro.org/archives/list/aarch64-laptops@lists.linaro.org/thread/U2IZENSIOOHZHGXVN7GM5HX5O3FD5KCF/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-acpi/20260716234538.1303811-1-W_Armin@gmx.de/
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/DT-ACPI-Hybrid-Mode-Linux