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URL: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-QCOM-USB-Audio-OLOAD

⇱ Qualcomm USB Audio Offloading Poised For Linux 6.16 After Going Through 38 Revisions - Phoronix


👁 Phoronix

Qualcomm USB Audio Offloading Poised For Linux 6.16 After Going Through 38 Revisions

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 13 April 2025 at 05:47 AM EDT. 8 Comments
Originally posted back in 2022 were Linux kernel patches for Qualcomm USB audio offloading for Qualcomm SoCs with an audio DSP that can take responsibility for issuing transfers to the USB host controller to free up system resources. After going through 38 rounds of code review the past 2+ years, it looks like Linux 6.16 will finally mainline this Qualcomm USB audio offloading support.

Queued up on Friday via the USB subsystem's usb-next branch were all of the v38 patches for the Qualcomm USB SND audio offloading support.

👁 Qualcomm sound diagram with offloading


For Qualcomm chipsets where the USB audio can be offloaded to a dedicated audio DSP for handling the transfers to the USB host controller, this lessens the work of the main CPU cores and can help with power management so those CPU cores can hit lower power states if otherwise untaxed.

👁 Qualcomm sound offloading patches


Nice seeing this work finally queued up into a "-next" branch and barring any issues from coming up it looks like this capability will be introduced for Linux 6.16 in the middle of the year.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.