linux-drivers/
drivers/pinctrl/nomadik

ST-Ericsson Nomadik and Ux500 pin controllers

Handles pin multiplexing and GPIO configuration on ST-Ericsson's Nomadik (STn8815) and Ux500 (DB8500) mobile application processors, along with their AB8500/AB8505 companion power-management chips. These SoCs shipped in late-2000s smartphones and development boards such as the Calao Snowball, and the platform was discontinued when ST-Ericsson dissolved in 2013.

keep-annotate conf=0.88 last_sold=2013 deploy=low replacement=none subsystem=pinctrl category=platform-vendor
88%

recommendation

Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the underlying ST-Ericsson Nomadik and U8500/NovaThor SoCs powered late-2000s and early-2010s mobile phones and development boards like the Snowball, and ST-Ericsson itself was wound down in 2013. Even so, the code is not abandoned: it received real bug fixes in 2025 with stable-tree backports, so it should stay while being clearly labelled as legacy hardware.

repository signals

9 files
5,117 source lines
41 commits, 5y
+541 / −1,370 lines added / removed, 5y
17 authors, 5y
monthly commits · 2021-04-21 → 2026-04-21 · 41 total · active in 22/61 months
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sources

  1. lore.kernel.org

    Mainline still sees non-removal maintenance in 2025 for Nomadik GPIO/pinctrl-related code.

  2. lore.kernel.org

    Nomadik pinctrl received a real bug-fix in 2025 with a Fixes tag and stable CC, indicating active support rather than abandonment.

  3. en.wikipedia.org

    Nomadik/STn8815 is an old mobile SoC family tied to 2000s-era phones, and the family is described as discontinued.

  4. en.wikipedia.org

    ST-Ericsson, the vendor behind later U8500/NovaThor parts in this family, was dissolved in 2013, supporting the conclusion that this hardware is long out of new production.

  5. en.wikipedia.org

    A representative Ux500-era development board had support withdrawn long ago, consistent with legacy-only deployments.

codex reasoning notes (technical)

Not removable: lore_file_timeline/lore_activity on drivers/pinctrl/nomadik/pinctrl-nomadik.c showed substantive 2025 activity, and no removal evidence surfaced; cited lore URLs came from lore-http MCP. Local tree reads (Kconfig, mach-ux500/mach-nomadik, DTS Makefile via shell) show this driver targets ST-Ericsson Nomadik/U8500-era ARM boards. Web search found Wikipedia pages for Nomadik, ST-Ericsson, and Snowball; these indicate discontinued vendor/platform history and old handset/dev-board deployments. Result: legacy hardware with low present-day use, but still seeing upstream fixes, so keep the driver with legacy/obsolete-hardware annotation rather than deprecate/remove.