Qualcomm Proposes Synx For The Linux Kernel With "Significant" Power + Performance Benefits

Qualcomm engineers have initiated a discussion over upstreaming Synx to the Linux kernel, which is a global synchronization framework across different parts of SoCs. Qualcomm is already using Synx internally and is reported to provide "significant" power and performance benefits. With today's complex SoCs sporting a variety of different cores, firmware, and other diverse IP, Synx aims to be a global synchronization framework to augment current subsystem/device-specific synchronization methods like DMA fence for graphics/display. While Synx is being led by Qualcomm, this synchronization framework is designed to be vendor-agnostic. Pravin Kumar Ravi explained in today's request for comments (RFC) message on the Linux kernel mailing list: "This RFC is intended to start a design discussion around Synx, a SoC-wide synchronization framework used to coordinate fences between Linux-hosted clients and non-Linux execution environments such as remote processors and firmware. The intent of Synx is not to replace dma-fence for existing in-kernel GPU/display style synchronization. Rather, provide a global synchronization mechanism spanning multiple subsystems and processors, while still integrating with existing Linux primitives such as dma-fence and sync_file where appropriate. The solution has shown significant power and performance benefits in the last few generations of Qualcomm mobile and XR chipsets, and is gathering more use cases. Also, the solution is SoC-agnostic, so other vendors can adopt it in the future if interested." Those wanting to learn more can do so via the RFC message. It will be interesting to see how the discussion goes and if/what process is agreed to for upstreaming Synx to the mainline Linux kernel.