HiSilicon HNS DSAF Ethernet on HIP05/Hi1610 ARM server SoCs
On-chip Ethernet controllers built into HiSilicon's first-generation ARM server SoCs from around 2015, including the HIP05 platform and the Hi1610 chip. These were used in early Huawei/HiSilicon ARM64 servers and reference boards before the Kunpeng 920 generation took over.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth flagging as legacy hardware. The Hi1610-class SoCs it targets launched around 2015 and have been superseded by HiSilicon's Kunpeng 920 line, so new deployments are unlikely, yet upstream history shows the code is still receiving fixes and small API updates into 2024 and beyond. Until the remaining installed base falls away, leaving it in place with a note about its niche is the right call.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
LKDDb ties CONFIG_HNS_DSAF to HiSilicon hip05 and Hi1610-class hardware, and shows the driver still present in current kernel series through 6.19-rc+HEAD.
- en.wikichip.org
Hi1610 is a 2015 HiSilicon server SoC, placing this driver's hardware generation in an older server platform era.
- hisilicon.com
HiSilicon's current server CPU marketing centers on Kunpeng 920, indicating the older Hi1610/HIP05 generation covered by hns is long superseded rather than a current sell-new platform.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection (`sed` on `drivers/net/ethernet/hisilicon/Kconfig`) shows HNS_DSAF/HNS_ENET cover hip05, Hi1610 and related SoCs. Local `git log` with safe.directory override shows steady upstream maintenance through 2024-2026, including fixes and API updates, with no obvious removal trend in inspected history; that argues against deprecate/remove. Web search yielded LKDDb for supported hardware/current kernel presence, WikiChip for Hi1610 launch vintage, and HiSilicon's current Kunpeng 920 page for evidence that this hardware generation is superseded. Conclusion: legacy but still maintained, so keep with annotation rather than deprecate.