Qualcomm MDP4 display controller for early Snapdragon SoCs
The fourth-generation Mobile Display Processor block built into Qualcomm's early Snapdragon S4 and Krait-era SoCs (MSM8x60, MSM8960, APQ8064), which drove the screens of phones and tablets shipped roughly 2011-2013, including devices like the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (2013). It handles panel scanout, composition layers, and display output for that generation of mobile hardware.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the hardware is over a decade old yet the code is demonstrably still alive: a 2025 stable backport dropped no-IOMMU support and a 2026 patch series updates the MDP4 paths alongside other DRM bridge work. New devices using this controller stopped shipping around 2013-2014, but postmarketOS and similar communities continue to mainline these phones and tablets, so removing the driver would strand those users.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
MDP4 still receives upstream maintenance in 2026; this patch updates drm/msm/mdp4 code rather than proposing removal.
- lore.kernel.org
MDP4 also received a 2025 stable backport ('drm/msm/mdp4: stop supporting no-IOMMU configuration'), indicating real bug-fix traffic.
- qualcomm.com
Qualcomm identified MSM8960 and APQ8064 as this Snapdragon generation, with APQ8064/MSM8930 samples due in early 2012; this places the hardware family firmly in the early-2010s market.
- wiki.postmarketos.org
postmarketOS documents APQ8064/MSM8960 mainlining work in 2025 and describes them as 2012 SoCs, showing remaining hobbyist/aftermarket deployments.
- en.wikipedia.org
The APQ8064 device list is concentrated in 2012-2013 products, supporting the conclusion that new mainstream deployments ended long ago.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate: local Kconfig inspection shows MDP4 is the older display controller for APQ8064/MSM8960/MSM8x60; lore_file_timeline on drivers/gpu/drm/msm/disp/mdp4/mdp4_kms.c showed fresh 2025-2026 maintenance patches and no explicit removal series. Qualcomm press-release and Wikipedia/postmarketOS web-search results place the platform in 2011-2013-era Snapdragon S4/Krait devices, with current evidence limited to community mainlining rather than new-product sales. Recommendation is keep-annotate: old hardware, low present-day deployment, but clearly still maintained upstream. URL provenance: two lore URLs from lore_file_timeline; Qualcomm/postmarketOS/Wikipedia URLs from web search results.