Siemens SIMATIC IPC industrial PC platform support
Platform glue for Siemens SIMATIC IPC industrial computers — ruggedized PCs used on factory floors and in process automation — exposing things like LEDs, watchdogs, and battery status on models including the BX-39A, BX-56A, and BX-59A. These machines are still being designed in to industrial deployments rather than being legacy gear.
recommendation
It should stay because Siemens still ships SIMATIC IPC hardware new in 2025 (the BX-39A family appears in current Siemens product literature), the code received substantive upstream work as recently as late 2024, and new model support like BX-56A/BX-59A was merged in 2023 via the platform-drivers-x86 tree. There is no generic replacement for these vendor-specific hooks, and no removal discussion has surfaced on the relevant mailing lists.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_SIEMENS_SIMATIC_IPC in mainline kernels 6.6–6.19 and 7.0-rc+HEAD, so the driver is current upstream code rather than an abandoned relic.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows the Siemens SIMATIC IPC battery support is also present in current mainline kernel ranges, matching the active subdrivers in this directory.
- patchew.org
The 2023 patch series added BX-56A/BX-59A model support, and Hans de Goede replied that patches were merged into the platform-drivers-x86-simatic-ipc branch, indicating active upstream enablement rather than deprecation.
- spinics.net
Mailing-list index entries for SIMATIC IPC changes show upstream discussion around additions and directory reorganization; this query surfaced no obvious removal or deprecation thread for the Siemens platform/x86 code.
- assets.new.siemens.com
A Siemens product PDF published about 5 months ago lists current SIMATIC IPC BX-39A orderable configurations and SKUs, showing at least part of the supported hardware family is still sold new in 2025.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection (`sed` on Kconfig and simatic-ipc.c, plus `git -c safe.directory=... log`) showed this directory is a real Siemens SIMATIC IPC platform driver, supports multiple IPC/BX models including BX-39A/BX-56A/BX-59A, and had substantive upstream touches through 2024-10-17. URLs were obtained via web search: LKDDb pages confirm current kernel presence; Patchew and Spinics provide mailing-list history and showed feature/addition traffic but no removal discussion in the searched results; the Siemens PDF shows new 2025-market availability for a supported SIMATIC IPC family member. Because the hardware is still sold into industrial niches and there is no natural generic replacement for these platform-specific hooks, the recommendation is keep.