Linux 6.15.1 Ships with Fix to Prevent Snapdragon X1 GPUs from Overheating

Greg Kroah-Hartman today released Linux 6.15.1 as the first stable point release to the Linux 6.15 kernel that first shipped a week and a half ago. Linux 6.15.1 brings an initial batch of fixes, which are particularly noteworthy if trying to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 laptop on Linux.

Linux 6.15.1 is predominantly made up of many DeviceTree backports for various ARM SoC/platform fixes. Most of the Linux 6.15.1 changes are these DT backports and of those standing out are a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 (x1e80100) fixes.

The most prominent of those Snapdragon X1 fixes for the Linux 6.15.1 kernel is now applying a consistent critical thermal shutdown temperature and ensuring GPU cooling for these setups.

Stephan Gerhold originally authored the patch back in February for ensuring GPU cooling with the Snapdragon X1 x1e80100 and was added to Linux 6.16 and now back-ported for Linux 6.15. Stephan explained with that patch:

"Unlike the CPU, the GPU does not throttle its speed automatically when it reaches high temperatures. With certain high GPU loads it is possible to reach the critical hardware shutdown temperature of 120°C, endangering the hardware and making it impossible to run certain applications.

Set up GPU cooling similar to the ACPI tables, by throttling the GPU speed when reaching 95°C and polling every 200ms."

Now that's in Linux 6.15.1 stable for protecting the X1 GPU.

See last month's article looking at the current (rough) shape of Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 laptop support and performance on Linux.

Not making it for Linux 6.15.1 is the recent power management regression fix affecting "nosmt" and other systems. Presumably that will be here in a few days for Linux 6.15.2.

More details on all of the Linux 6.15.1 patches via the mailing list announcement.

Also out today is Linux 6.14.10, Linux 6.12.32, and Linux 6.6.93.