Cisco Cobalt PCIe HD video capture and output card
A PCIe HD video capture and playback card developed internally at Cisco (PCI ID 1137:2732) that handles SDI and HDMI video streams. It was never offered as a retail product, so its use has always been confined to Cisco's own appliances and engineering systems.
recommendation
Worth keeping but the niche should be documented: the Cobalt card was never sold outside Cisco, so real-world users are essentially limited to legacy Cisco appliances and internal lab systems. Even so, the code is not abandoned — it received cobalt-specific cleanups in 2025 and was still being updated as part of broader media subsystem API work in 2026, so removal would be premature.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
LKDDb mirrors the kernel help text stating this is the Cisco PCIe Cobalt card and that the board is not available outside Cisco; it also maps the driver to PCI ID 1137:2732.
- lore.kernel.org
linux-media saw a 2025 cobalt-specific patch ('media: cobalt: Use str_enabled_disabled() helper'), showing the driver still receives upstream maintenance.
- lore.kernel.org
A 2026 treewide media patch still touched cobalt-driver.c, indicating the code remains integrated with current media subsystem API work rather than being abandoned or under removal.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Cisco Cobalt is a real PCIe media driver, but kernel Kconfig/LKDDb says the board was never broadly sold outside Cisco, so present-day deployments are likely limited to internal/lab or legacy appliance use; I therefore marked hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025=false and last_widely_available_year=null. Upstream activity is still visible: the lore_file_timeline MCP query on drivers/media/pci/cobalt/cobalt-driver.c showed 2025 cobalt-specific maintenance and 2026 API-adjustment touches, with no removal evidence in the sampled history, so removal/deprecation is premature. URLs were obtained via web search for LKDDb and via lore_file_timeline MCP for the two lore links.