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Initial mainline video capture and camera support for Rockchip RK3588

Collabora details the arduous journey of bringing mainline Linux support for video capture and camera functions to Rockchip's RK3588 SoC. This deep dive into kernel development highlights the significant technical challenges and multi-year effort required to fully open-source hardware capabilities. It's a testament to the open-source community's dedication to hardware enablement, resonating with HN's appreciation for complex engineering problems and overcoming vendor-specific hurdles.

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Apr 13, 3:00 PM
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The Lowdown

Collabora has been on a multi-year mission to deliver mainline Linux support for the Rockchip RK3588 System-on-a-Chip, particularly focusing on its video capture (VICAP) and image signal processor (ISP) blocks. This initiative aims to close a significant gap in an otherwise well-supported SoC lineup, enabling a wider range of open-source multimedia applications and addressing issues associated with relying on vendor-specific Linux kernels.

  • The Challenge: Video capture and ISP hardware blocks are notoriously difficult to mainline due to limited documentation, inherent complexity, and the substantial time and cost involved, often leading to reliance on non-mainline vendor kernels which can pose regulatory compliance risks.
  • The Mission's Origin: Collabora joined an existing mainlining effort for the rkcif driver in early 2022, building on discussions that began in 2020. This required a complete refactoring of the driver to align with a media-controller centric V4L2 framework.
  • Key Milestones: After numerous iterations and renamings, the rkcif driver, providing basic support for PX30 VIP and RK3568 VICAP, was accepted into mainline Linux in October 2025. Subsequently, a mainline driver for the Rockchip MIPI CSI-2 receiver unit was also integrated by January 2026.
  • Demonstrations: Progress was showcased at Open Source Summit Europe 2025 and FOSDEM 2026, including a demo of the RK3588 VICAP capturing an image from a Sony IMX415 sensor, albeit with initial limitations like software debayering and color inaccuracies.
  • Future Steps: The ongoing work includes supporting the RK3588 VICAP MUX-TOISP unit for direct hardware connection to the ISP, developing a new rkisp2 mainline Linux kernel driver from scratch (in collaboration with Rockchip and Ideas on Board) to replace non-upstreamable vendor drivers, and integrating libcamera support for the RK3588 image processing pipeline.

This continuous effort by Collabora and its partners underscores a significant push to ensure that powerful hardware capabilities, like those in the Rockchip RK3588, are fully accessible and usable within the mainline Linux ecosystem, paving the way for more robust and open multimedia development.