The MSM8953 relies on standard Qualcomm qcom drivers in the Linux kernel: drivers/gpu/drm/msm : Adreno GPU driver. drivers/phy/qualcomm : PHY drivers for USB and UFS. sound/soc/qcom : ALSA audio drivers. 3.2 Device Tree (DTS) - The Critical Component
In ARM64 Linux, drivers are rarely hardcoded with peripheral memory addresses. Instead, the kernel relies on a Device Tree (DT) to discover hardware. For the MSM8953, the hardware topology is defined in the upstream kernel under arch/arm64/boot/dts/qcom/msm8953.dtsi .
MSM8953 integrates WCN3660B or WCN3990 (depending on variant). The driver is wlan.ko (Pronto or QCACLD).
In the sprawling ecosystem of ARM64 System-on-Chips (SoCs), few platforms have achieved the legendary status of Qualcomm’s . 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.
Connects the SoC to the PM8953 Power Management IC (PMIC). Almost every driver depends on this bus to toggle voltage regulators. 2. The Foundation: Device Tree Nodes ( .dts and .dtsi )
Driver support for MSM8953 varies significantly between original vendor releases and community-driven upstreaming: Device msm8953 for arm64
If you are looking to build a custom ROM or bring up a new Linux distribution on an older Qualcomm device, identifying the correct DTS and using the latest mainline kernel drivers is the best starting point.
If you are a tinkerer, developer, or Linux enthusiast looking to play with MSM8953 ARM64 drivers, you do not need to start from scratch. The community has provided fantastic foundational resources.
Booting the Mainline Linux Kernel on Qualcomm Devices | Blog
The output is wlan.ko . Check its architecture:
The Redmi Note 4 (mido) is the poster child for MSM8953. In 2022, the maintainer released a build that achieved:
8x ARM Cortex-A53 cores operating up to 2.0 GHz.
Demystifying the MSM8953 (Snapdragon 625) ARM64 Linux Driver Architecture
(Qualcomm Snapdragon 625) is an SoC widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems