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No audio: SOF DSP boot failure (err -110) on Intel Tiger Lake, HP EliteBook #5908

Description

@devkay47

Describe the bug:
No audio output on an HP EliteBook (Intel Tiger Lake, PCI ID 8086:a0c8, "Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller"). The SOF driver fails to boot the onboard DSP entirely — no PCM device is ever created, so nothing shows up in pactl/wpctl/pavucontrol beyond a Dummy Output. System-wide, not app-specific.

Environment:
HP EliteBook, Intel Tiger Lake, PCI ID 8086:a0c8
Kernel driver in use: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
Kernel: 7.1.9-arch1-2
Distro: Omarchy (Arch-based)
Audio stack: PipeWire + WirePlumber
sof-firmware: 2025.12.2-1 (installed, confirmed current — not a missing-package issue)

dmesg output:
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: cl_dsp_init: timeout with rom_status_reg (0x80000) read
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: ------------[ DSP dump start ]------------
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Boot iteration failed: 3/3
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: fw_state: SOF_FW_BOOT_IN_PROGRESS (3)
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: 0x06000021: module: ROM, state: CSE_IPC_RESET_PHASE_1, waiting for: CSE_CSR, running
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: extended rom status: 0x6000021 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x25101c2 0x0
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: ------------[ DSP dump end ]------------
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: dsp init failed after 3 attempts with err: -110
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Failed to start DSP
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: failed to boot DSP firmware -110
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: hda_dsp_core_reset_enter: timeout on HDA_DSP_REG_ADSPCS read
sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: dsp core reset failed: core_mask 1

What I tried:
Confirmed sof-firmware was installed at a current version, and PipeWire/WirePlumber were running clean with no errors of their own — ruled those out before tracing it to the kernel log above.

Workaround that fixed it:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/modprobe.d
echo "options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/no-sof.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P

On Omarchy this also needs limine-mkinitcpio afterward to update the Limine boot entries — distro-specific, not relevant upstream.

Speaker output works after reboot. Not yet confirmed whether this disables the digital mic array, which other EliteBook reports say depends on SOF.

Additional context:
Same error signature (dsp init failed after 3 attempts with err: -110, cl_dsp_init: timeout with rom_status_reg) shows up in reports on other hardware sharing PCI ID 8086:a0c8 looks like a DSP boot timing issue on this controller generation broadly, not this specific laptop.

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