Qualcomm

QNN (Qualcomm AI Engine Direct) Backend

Slash command argument routing

When this skill is invoked with arguments (e.g. /qualcomm <args>), classify the args FIRST and route before doing anything else:

Advanced Topics

When the user's request falls into one of these areas, read the corresponding file before proceeding:

Building

Use backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh. Linux only (macOS not supported).

Environment variables:

• QNN_SDK_ROOT — path to QNN SDK (auto-downloaded if not set)
• ANDROID_NDK_ROOT — path to Android NDK (auto-downloaded if not set)

Build targets:

Direct mode takes the DSP type as its argument: 0 = ADSP/LPAI, 3 = CDSP/HTP. --soc_model is required with it. When the DSP type is 0, the build also signs the runtime libraries by calling sign_library.sh --direct_mode.

Common build commands:

# Full build (x86_64 + Android)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh

# x86_64 only (faster, for Python interface development)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --skip_linux_android

# Android only (skip x86_64)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --skip_x86_64

# Incremental build (skip clean)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --no_clean

# Direct mode on the ADSP/LPAI (requires HEXAGON_SDK_ROOT, HEXAGON_TOOLS_ROOT)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --build_direct_mode 0 --soc_model SM8850

# Direct mode on the CDSP/HTP
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --build_direct_mode 3 --soc_model SM8750

# OE Linux embedded target (requires TOOLCHAIN_ROOT_HOST, TOOLCHAIN_ROOT_TARGET)
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --enable_linux_embedded

# Release build
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --release

# Control parallelism
./backends/qualcomm/scripts/build.sh --job_number 8

After x86_64 build, the Python interface .so files are copied to backends/qualcomm/python/ automatically.

Testing

QNN_SDK_ROOT=/path/to/qnn_sdk \
ANDROID_NDK_ROOT=/path/to/android_ndk \
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/executorch/build-x86/lib:/path/to/qnn_sdk/lib/x86_64-linux-clang \
PYTHONPATH=$(dirname $EXECUTORCH_ROOT) \
python backends/qualcomm/tests/test_qnn_delegate.py \
    TestQNNFloatingPointOperator.test_qnn_backend_abs \
    --host $HOST --device $DEVICE_SERIAL --soc_model SM8850 --build_folder build-android -a /path/to/artifacts

Note (build from source): Set PYTHONPATH to the parent directory of the executorch repo root. Required because executorch.examples.qualcomm lives in the source tree and is not installed into site-packages.

Required: --soc_model, --build_folder (Android build dir). Optional: --device (serial), --host, --artifact_dir / -a, --compile_only, --enable_x86_64, --backend <htp|gpu|lpai>, --direct_build_folder <dir> (direct mode; required for LPAI op package tests).

Most flags are long-form only — they come from setup_common_args_and_variables() in backends/qualcomm/export_utils.py, which defines no short aliases. Only the test file's own arguments have them (-r/--executorch_root, -a/--artifact_dir, -i/--image_dataset, -p/--pretrained_weight, -n/--model_name, -e/--error_only, -d/--op_package_dir).

Test classes: