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BSP Tracker  /  BSP Status / AMD (Xilinx)

AMD Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC

Upstream since v4.1 and AMD upstreams aggressively; the usual 'the BSP is ancient' argument simply does not apply here. You can ship a mainline PS-side Linux. What you do NOT escape by going mainline is Vivado/Vitis: the PL bitstream can only come from AMD's tools.

BSP branch xlnx_rebase_v6.18_LTSLinux 6.18Mainline since v4.1
See all 17 →
Security cliff
Upstream fixes for Linux 6.18 stop in December 2028 — 29 months from now.
The vendor BSP tracks Linux 6.18 on branch xlnx_rebase_v6.18_LTS. After that date no fixes arrive from upstream, and maintaining this kernel becomes your job.

Mainline instead of the vendor BSP

Can you ship mainline instead, and what exactly do you lose if you do?

Mainline is shippable

BlockIPUpstreamDetail
FPGA managerPL / partial reconfigurationupstreamdrivers/fpga has zynqmp-fpga, xilinx-pr-decoupler and friends. Bitstream LOADING works on mainline; producing the bitstream still needs Vivado.
VPU encodeAllegro DVT VCUupstreamdrivers/media/platform/allegro-dvt; Kconfig names the ZynqMP EV family explicitly.
VPU decodeVCUmissingallegro-dvt is an ENCODER driver. No mainline ZynqMP VCU decoder found.
GPUMali-400 MP2unverifiedExpected via lima; a GPU node in the mainline zynqmp.dtsi was not verified.
Mainline since v4.1, verified by bracketing the device tree against the kernel tags: proof 1 · proof 2

Vendor BSP

Repository. https://github.com/Xilinx/linux-xlnx

Newest branch that actually exists. xlnx_rebase_v6.18_LTS, tracking Linux 6.18. Last commit 2026-07-01.

Cadence. A clean annual LTS rebase: 5.15 -> 6.1 -> 6.6 -> 6.12 -> 6.18, each with a matching update branch. The freshest vendor tree of any SoC here.

Silicon longevity

Committed until 2045. AMD states UltraScale+ device lifecycles are extended through 2045, and a minimum 15-year lifecycle for new families. This is a blog announcement, not a per-OPN table — confirm for a specific XCZU part.

Vendor source

Yocto

Layer. meta-xilinx. No branch for the current Yocto LTS.

There is NO wrynose branch — only wrynose-next, a staging branch. AMD's real delivery vehicle is its own rel-vYYYY.N branches (rel-v2026.1 exists). This is the classic case of a layer declaring an LTS it has no branch for.

Hardware you can buy

Evaluate on. ZCU102, ZCU104, Kria KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit

Production modules.

What to do about it

AMD Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC: upstream fixes stop December 2028. That leaves 29 months. After that date the kernel this BSP is based on receives no further security fixes from upstream, and maintaining it becomes your team’s responsibility.

There are three options:

  1. Backport the fixes yourself. Your team maintains a kernel that nobody else maintains: tracking each CVE, applying the patch to a tree that has diverged from upstream, and testing the result, for as long as the product ships.
  2. Move to the vendor’s newer BSP. This gives you a few more years of upstream fixes, and it costs a second bring-up: a new kernel, your patches forward-ported, drivers re-validated, and the product re-tested.
  3. Move to mainline. Mainline supports this SoC, so the migration is substantial work but not research. It is the only option that does not have to be repeated when the next vendor kernel reaches end of life.

All three are engineering work, and all three are work we do: reading vendor kernel trees, checking what mainline actually supports, and moving products from one to the other. This page is built from the same work.

Embedded Linux engineering →Talk to us about your BSP

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