Atmel/Microchip AT91SAM9 Image Sensor Interface (ISI)
The camera-capture block built into Atmel (now Microchip) AT91SAM9G45-class ARM9 system-on-chips, used to attach parallel image sensors to small embedded boards. It has been used since the late 2000s in industrial, point-of-sale, and evaluation-kit designs, and the SoC family is still sold today.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the underlying Microchip AT91SAM9G45 SoC is still listed as in production and shipped on evaluation kits with a camera interface, and the driver continues to receive upstream attention as recently as 2025 alongside broader V4L2 API updates. Volumes are low and the use case is narrow embedded/industrial imaging, so a note about its legacy character would help future maintainers without justifying removal.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Atmel ISI still received an atmel-isi-specific upstream patch in April 2025, indicating active maintenance rather than abandonment.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver was still being updated by broad V4L2 API churn in April 2026, so it remains part of actively maintained media-driver codepaths.
- microchip.com
Microchip listed AT91SAM9G45 as 'Status: In Production', supporting that relevant hardware was still sold new in 2025.
- microchip.com
Microchip's SAM9M10/SAM9G45 evaluation kit page advertises a camera interface, confirming the SoC family still maps to the Linux driver's imaging use case.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Driver code inspection via shell showed Kconfig 'ATMEL Image Sensor Interface (ISI) support' and OF match for 'atmel,at91sam9g45-isi', so this is a SoC camera-capture driver for the AT91SAM9G45 family. Active-upstream evidence came from lore_file_timeline on drivers/media/platform/atmel/atmel-isi.c, which returned 2025-2026 touches including the cited atmel-isi-specific patch and later V4L2 API updates; a separate lore_regex removal probe timed out, and no removal discussion surfaced in the successful lore sample. Deployment evidence came from web search on Microchip product and eval-kit pages showing the chip remained in production and had a camera-interface deployment story. Conclusion: niche embedded/industrial use persists, but this is low-volume legacy-style silicon, so keep the driver with annotation rather than deprecate or remove.