Qualcomm SoC DMA engines (ADM, BAM, GPI, HIDMA)
A collection of on-chip DMA controllers built into Qualcomm Snapdragon and related SoCs, used to shuttle data between CPU memory and on-chip peripherals like I2C, SPI, UART, storage, and crypto blocks. They appear in everything from older MSM-series chips to current Snapdragon platforms such as SC7280, SM8150, SM8250, SM8350, and SM8450 found in modern phones, Chromebooks, and embedded boards.
recommendation
It should stay because Qualcomm is actively adding support for new hardware revisions here, with patches as recent as April 2026 introducing BAM v2.0.0 support and new GPI features for multi-owner I2C. The drivers cover current Snapdragon-class SoCs that ship in large volumes today and have no generic replacement, so removal is not on the table.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
As of 2026-04-24, upstream is still adding new hardware support to this directory: bam_dma gained BAM v2.0.0 support, which argues against deprecation/removal.
- lore.kernel.org
As of 2026-04-23, qcom gpi is under active feature development for multi-owner I2C transfers, showing current maintainer attention rather than retirement.
- git.kernel.org
The in-tree GPI driver matches multiple relatively modern Qualcomm SoC compatibles including sc7280, sm8150, sm8250, sm8350, and sm8450, indicating use on newer Qualcomm platforms rather than only legacy chips.
- git.kernel.org
Kconfig describes these drivers as core Qualcomm SoC DMA engines for on-chip peripherals and virtualization use cases, implying ongoing deployment in Qualcomm device families with no generic replacement driver.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Keep. Evidence from lore_activity: recent 2026 patch traffic on both bam_dma and gpi shows active upstream development, including new IP support and feature work; that is the opposite of removal talk. The directory is a bundle of Qualcomm on-SoC DMA engines used by current peripheral fabrics, and gpi.c still targets modern Snapdragon-class compatibles. hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025 is an inference from the 2026 new-support patches plus modern compatible list, not from a vendor SKU EOL page. URLs obtained via lore_activity MCP for the two lore links; git.kernel.org URLs are canonical recall anchored by local file inspection via shell.