Allwinner sunxi SoC power-domain controllers
Power-domain controllers built into Allwinner's "sunxi" ARM application processors — chips like the D1 RISC-V SoC, the V853 AI vision SoC, the H6/H616 set-top-box and tablet SoCs, and the newer A523 family. The hardware gates power to internal blocks (GPU, video, display, etc.) so the rest of the kernel can switch them on and off to save energy.
recommendation
It should stay because the Allwinner SoCs it controls (D1, V853, H6/H616, and the newer A523) are still being sold for tablets, vision/camera modules, and embedded boards in 2025-2026, and the code is actively maintained — A523 support landed in July 2025 and H6 PRCM power-domain support in April 2025. There is no generic replacement for these vendor-specific power blocks, and no removal discussion has appeared on the mailing lists.
repository signals
sources
- android.googlesource.com
Upstream saw substantive maintenance in July 2025: commit 982aaa683d20 added A523 support in drivers/pmdomain/sunxi/sun20i-ppu.c, showing the directory is active rather than obsolete.
- lists.infradead.org
July 2025 review thread for adding the Allwinner A523 PCK-600 driver shows active upstream development and no removal/deprecation direction.
- allwinnertech.com
Allwinner still markets the A523 family for tablets and display-class products, indicating relevant hardware remained in new-product circulation in and after 2025.
- allwinnertech.com
Allwinner still markets the V853 family for AI vision/camera products, indicating ongoing embedded deployments for hardware covered by this driver family.
- lcsc.com
The Allwinner D1-H SoC was still listed by a major component distributor in 2026, supporting continued availability of at least one supported SoC.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection showed three real platform drivers in this directory with module_platform_driver entry points and sunxi-specific genpd logic. Local `git -c safe.directory=... log` showed six substantive touches since 2023, including 2025-07-12/15 A523 work and 2025-04-16 H6 PRCM PPU support, so this is recently maintained. URLs were obtained via `web.search_query` except the commit URL, which was opened from web search results and corroborates the local git history. I also searched for lore/list traffic around drivers/pmdomain/sunxi and found active add-support threads but no removal discussion. Because supported SoCs are still being marketed/sold for current embedded products and there is no generic replacement for these Allwinner-specific power-domain blocks, the correct recommendation is keep.