msm8953 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625/626/630 SoC family identifier; "msm8953" commonly appears in kernel device trees, driver trees, and Android kernel sources. For arm64 platforms, driver support covers SoC subsystems such as CPU/cluster power management, GPU (Adreno), display, multimedia (ISP/VPU), modem interfaces (QMI/PCIe/SDIO), USB, MMC (eMMC/UFS), audio, thermal, clock/reset (clk), regulators (regmap/regulator), and platform-specific interrupt controllers. A concise account below highlights key driver areas, common issues, integration notes, and practical tips for working with msm8953 on arm64.

MSM8953 is a 64-bit ARMv8-A (arm64) SoC from Qualcomm, featuring 8x Cortex-A53 cores, Adreno 506 GPU, and various peripheral controllers (I2C, SPI, UART, USB, SDHCI, PCM/Audio, GPU, display, etc.). In the context of arm64 driver support, the landscape splits between:

As of 2024, mainline Linux (kernel 6.5+) has partial support for MSM8953 thanks to the Qualcomm ARM64 platform maintainers. Notable drivers mainlined:

Missing from mainline:

Thus, “msm8953 for arm64 driver” in mainline Linux is a work in progress.

MSM8953 arm64 driver support in mainline is functional for low-speed peripherals and CPU/clocks/pinctrl, but feature-incomplete for mobile/audio/graphics. It’s a good experimental platform for arm64 kernel hacking, but not production-ready for a fully featured device. For that, stick to Qualcomm’s downstream kernel (Android common kernel 4.4/4.9/4.14) where arm64 drivers are complete, albeit closed-source and aging.

In the sprawling ecosystem of ARM64 System-on-Chips (SoCs), few platforms have achieved the legendary status of Qualcomm’s MSM8953. Codenamed "Sdm439" in later iterations but more famously known as the Snapdragon 625 – and its clock-bumped sibling, the Snapdragon 626 – this 14nm FinFET chipset powered hundreds of millions of devices between 2016 and 2020. From the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 to the Moto Z Play and the Asus Zenfone 3, the MSM8953 became synonymous with battery efficiency and reliable performance.

However, as Android moves toward mandatory 64-bit only environments (ARM64-v8a) and custom ROM communities (LineageOS, Pixel Experience, etc.) continue to breathe new life into these devices, one question echoes through developer forums: What is the state of MSM8953 drivers for ARM64?

This article dissects the MSM8953’s architecture, its driver stack for modern ARM64 Linux kernels (4.9, 4.14, 4.19, and beyond), compatibility issues, and how developers are adapting vendor binaries to run Android 12/13/14.

Projects like PostmarketOS have made progress on the MSM8953 (specifically the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 – mido). However, the current status is:

Most MSM8953 devices use UFS (Universal Flash Storage) for internal storage. The ufs-qcom driver is required to interface with the storage controller. This is a critical bootstrap driver; without it, the operating system cannot mount the root filesystem.