drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/phy · keep-annotate

Broadcom BCM4313/BCM43224/BCM43225 SoftMAC 802.11n Wi-Fi PHY

The radio (PHY) layer for Broadcom's BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225 single- and dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi chips, which shipped on mini-PCIe laptop cards (such as the Dell Wireless 1520) in roughly 2009 to 2013. It pairs with the brcmsmac driver to handle the analog and baseband side of the radio in software on the host CPU.

keep-annotate conf=0.80 last_sold=2013 deploy=low replacement=none subsystem=net category=networking-wireless

80%

recommendation

Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the chips are a decade old and no longer sold new, but the brcmsmac driver still attracted real bug-fix and cleanup patches into 2026, so a meaningful number of older laptops still rely on it. Distros and packagers should treat it as legacy-but-live rather than abandoned, and flag it as a candidate for eventual deprecation once upstream activity tapers off.

repository signals

14 files

53,037 source lines

14 commits, 5y

+45 / −558 lines added / removed, 5y

11 authors, 5y

monthly commits · 2021-04-21 → 2026-04-21 · 14 total · active in 9/61 months

sources

spinics.net
brcmsmac received a real upstream bug fix in February 2026, showing current maintenance rather than abandonment.
spinics.net
brcmsmac also saw 2026 wireless-next cleanup work, indicating ongoing upstream attention and no visible removal trajectory.
cateee.net
LKDDb still lists CONFIG_BRCMSMAC in current kernel series and identifies it as the Broadcom IEEE802.11n PCIe SoftMAC WLAN driver.
wikidevi.wi-cat.ru
The driver is associated with Broadcom BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225 chips.
wikidevi.wi-cat.ru
One representative BCM43224 card dates to 2009-era half-mini-PCIe laptop hardware, supporting the conclusion that this is legacy client hardware rather than a current new-sales platform.

codex reasoning notes (technical)

Local shell inspection (`ls`/`rg`) showed this directory is the PHY implementation inside the real `brcmsmac` PCIe Wi-Fi driver, with BCM43224/43225 references. Lore MCP was unavailable and `lei` was not installed, so lore history was approximated via `web.search_query` results on spinics/lists mirrors: the 2026 stable fix URL and 2026 wireless-next patch URL show active maintenance and no removal discussion, so `remove`/`deprecate` is not justified. `web.search_query` also returned LKDDb and WikiDevi pages; those identify the driver/chips and point to 2009-2011 mini-PCIe laptop modules, which implies legacy deployments remain but new 2025 sales are unlikely. Because there is still upstream bug-fix traffic but the hardware is old and niche, `keep-annotate` fits best.