Freescale/NXP i.MX1/21/25/27 LCD Controller
The simple LCD controller block built into Freescale (now NXP) i.MX1, i.MX21, i.MX25, and i.MX27 application processors — ARM9-era SoCs from the 2000s that are still used today in long-lifecycle industrial, medical, and automotive embedded boards to drive small parallel-RGB display panels.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche. The driver is relatively young in mainline (merged in 2023 and still receiving fixes in 2024) and supports a narrow class of embedded ARM9-era NXP processors. Some chips like the i.MX21 are flagged "not recommended for new designs," but i.MX25 parts remain in NXP's long-term product longevity program, so real industrial and automotive boards using this display block are still being shipped and maintained in 2025.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Upstream driver is recent and still receives maintenance; local git history shows initial merge in 2023 and substantive fixes/features in 2024, with only treewide churn after that.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_DRM_IMX_LCDC exists in mainline since 6.4 and matches Freescale i.MX LCDC hardware via fsl,imx21-lcdc and fsl,imx25-lcdc; Kconfig text says the block is found on i.MX1/i.MX21/i.MX25/i.MX27.
- nxp.com
One supported family member, i.MX21, is marked not recommended for new designs, indicating legacy status for part of the covered hardware base.
- nxp.com
At least one supported i.MX25 family member remained active on NXP's site and was listed in the product longevity program, so the hardware class was not entirely extinct in 2025.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: Kconfig/Makefile plus platform_driver in imx-lcdc.c. Driver identity and supported SoCs were verified from local file inspection with rg and corroborated by LKDDB. Upstream activity was checked with local `git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/gpu/drm/imx/lcdc`; the canonical kernel.org log URL is cited for the same path. I attempted lore access via MCP and `lei`, but lore-http was unavailable and `lei` was not installed; web lore searches returned no hits for removal/deprecation, so absence of active removal talk is an inference rather than a directly cited lore thread. NXP pages obtained via web search show mixed reality: i.MX21 is legacy/NRND, but i.MX25 automotive-era parts still had active longevity listings, so keep the driver but annotate it as mostly mature, niche embedded support rather than a removal candidate.