Marvell/Intel PXA SoC SSP and pin-mux support
Low-level SoC support code for Intel/Marvell PXA application processors (PXA25x, PXA27x, PXA3xx, PXA168, PXA910) that powered handhelds, PDAs, and industrial modules from the early 2000s into the 2010s. It provides the synchronous serial port block used by PXA audio and SPI drivers, plus the multi-function pin configuration glue that PXA board code relies on.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the code still underpins in-tree PXA audio and SPI drivers and saw routine maintenance updates in 2023 and 2024, with no removal discussion in sight. Commercial PXA modules are clearly winding down though — Toradex, for example, ended Colibri PXA320 availability in 2020 and steered customers to i.MX7 — so this is legacy embedded support that should stay until the remaining PXA boards are removed wholesale, since there is no replacement driver to migrate to.
repository signals
sources
- lists.ozlabs.org
A 2023 platform-driver callback conversion series explicitly included "soc/pxa: ssp: Convert to platform remove callback returning void", indicating maintenance traffic rather than removal work.
- lists.infradead.org
A 2024 follow-up series switched drivers/soc users back to struct platform_driver::remove(), covering drivers/soc broadly and matching the recent substantive touch in this directory.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_PXA_SSP is still present in current kernel series and maps to multiple compatibles including mrvl,pxa25x-ssp, mrvl,pxa27x-ssp, mrvl,pxa3xx-ssp, mrvl,pxa168-ssp, mrvl,pxa910-ssp, and mrvl,ce4100-ssp.
- docs.kernel.org
Kernel documentation still describes the pxa2xx SPI host driver as supporting PXA2xx and compatible SSP blocks, showing the SSP layer still has an in-kernel use case.
- community.toradex.com
Toradex stated in 2018 that Colibri PXA320 modules would be available only until 2020 and recommended moving to Colibri iMX7, which is evidence of end-of-life migration for a notable commercial PXA module line.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection (`rg`, `sed`) showed this directory contains real kernel driver/support code: `ssp.c` registers a platform_driver and is consumed by in-tree PXA audio code; `mfp.c` is active SoC pinmux support used by PXA board code. Recent upstream activity found via web search is maintenance-only callback churn in 2023 and 2024, with no removal/deprecation discussion surfaced. Deployment looks legacy/embedded-only: LKDDb and kernel docs show the SSP block is still wired into current kernels, but commercial availability evidence found via web search points to PXA modules aging out by 2020. No natural replacement driver exists because this is SoC-specific support glue; the practical replacement is platform migration off PXA, so `keep-annotate` fits better than deprecate/remove.