Sunplus SP7021 USB 2.0 PHY
The analog USB 2.0 PHY block built into the Sunplus SP7021 "Plus1" system-on-chip, a quad-core Arm Cortex-A7 SoC that Sunplus markets for industrial control and IoT gateways and which powers boards such as the Banana Pi BPI-F2S. The PHY handles the electrical signaling for the SoC's on-chip USB 2.0 host and device controllers.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as a niche component because the SP7021 is a low-volume SoC aimed at IoT and industrial control rather than mainstream consumer devices. The driver is relatively new (added in 2022), received fixes into late 2023, and Sunplus still sells the chip and the Banana Pi BPI-F2S board built around it in 2025, so there's a small but real user base.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
Upstream kernel config `CONFIG_PHY_SUNPLUS_USB` exists for Linux 6.1 through 6.19-rc/HEAD, with module `phy-sunplus-usb2` and DT compatible `sunplus,sp7021-usb2-phy`.
- w3.sunplus.com
Sunplus still markets SP7021 as a Linux SoC for IoT and industrial control, and lists USB among its interfaces.
- sunplus.atlassian.net
The public SP7021 documentation portal remained active into 2025 and includes purchasing/documentation links, indicating the platform is still supported and obtainable.
- jyctec.com
A commercial Banana Pi BPI-F2S board based on Sunplus SP7021 was still listed for sale, supporting continued niche new deployments.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection of `drivers/phy/sunplus/phy-sunplus-usb2.c` identifies this as the Sunplus SP7021 USB2 PHY driver. Local `git log` (shell) shows the driver was added in 2022 and still received substantive fixes through 2023-11-20 from multiple authors; I found no evidence of an active removal push in the available environment, so this does not look orphaned enough for deprecate/remove. URLs were obtained via web search (`cateee.net` LKDDb page, Sunplus product page, Sunplus public docs portal, and an SP7021 board sale listing). The hardware appears to remain sold for niche industrial/IoT use rather than broad consumer deployment, so keep it upstream but annotate it as low-volume, SoC-specific hardware with limited deployment.