NXP LPC32xx On-Chip Ethernet MAC
The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet controller built into NXP's LPC32xx family of ARM9-based microcontrollers, such as the LPC3240 and LPC3250. These chips first shipped in the late 2000s and are still sold today for industrial, medical, and networked control equipment that needs a low-power MCU with on-chip networking.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth flagging as a niche driver. The underlying LPC3240/LPC3250 microcontrollers are still listed as Active products on NXP's website in 2025, the driver is still receiving real bug-fix patches upstream as recently as 2026, and no other in-tree driver (including the stmmac variants used for newer LPC families) covers this specific MAC. Deployment volume on modern Linux is small, so a comment noting its embedded ARM9 scope would help future maintainers.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still receives upstream bug-fix patches in 2026, so it is not abandoned in practice.
- nxp.com
NXP still listed an LPC32xx Ethernet-capable part as Active in 2025/2026, indicating the hardware family is still sold new.
- nxp.com
Another Ethernet-capable LPC32xx variant is also listed Active, and NXP positions it for industrial/medical/network-control uses, suggesting continuing but niche deployments.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local exec_command inspection of Kconfig/lpc_eth.c shows this directory is a real platform Ethernet driver for ARCH_LPC32XX ('LPC Ethernet Driver', compatible 'nxp,lpc-eth'). lore_file_timeline on drivers/net/ethernet/nxp/lpc_eth.c showed recent non-mechanical fixes through 2026-03-30 (URL cited from lore output), which argues against deprecation/removal. Web search found official NXP product pages for LPC3240/LPC3250 marked Active (URLs cited), so hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025 is true, but the family is an older ARM9 MCU niche with likely low modern deployment volume. No natural upstream replacement driver covers the same LPC32xx MAC block; stmmac glue drivers in-tree target different LPC families.