Analog Devices AD983x DDS Waveform Generator Chips
A family of small SPI-controlled direct digital synthesis chips from Analog Devices (AD9832, AD9833, AD9834, AD9835, AD9837, AD9838) that generate sine, triangle, and square waveforms up to tens of MHz. They are commonly used in lab signal generators, industrial test equipment, medical instruments, and hobbyist embedded boards.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging its niche, because Analog Devices still sells these DDS chips new in 2025 and the code has seen real fixes, device-tree work, and cleanups through 2021-2025. The catch is that it has been sitting in the staging tree for years using the older sysfs-style interface, so it deserves either promotion out of staging or a clear note that it serves a small industrial and lab audience rather than mainstream deployments.
repository signals
sources
- analog.com
AD9832 is marked PRODUCTION by Analog Devices, with sample-and-buy availability and industrial/test/medical application positioning.
- www-cce.cldnet.analog.com
AD9834 is marked PRODUCTION by Analog Devices, indicating the related DDS family is still sold new.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_AD9832 remains present through 7.0-rc+HEAD and maps to drivers/staging/iio/frequency/ad9832.c for AD9832/AD9835.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_AD9834 remains present through 7.0-rc+HEAD and maps to drivers/staging/iio/frequency/ad9834.c for AD9833/AD9834/AD9837/AD9838.
- git.kernel.org
Canonical upstream log location for the directory; local git history in the checked-out kernel snapshot shows continued substantive maintenance through 2025 rather than abandonment.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real SPI IIO staging driver directory: local shell inspection found module_spi_driver() in ad9832.c and ad9834.c. Local shell git log showed repeated substantive fixes/conversions/devicetree work from 2021-2025, so this is not dormant; I attached the canonical kernel.org log URL by canonical recall for the upstream location. Web search found current Analog Devices product pages for AD9832 and AD9834, both marked production, which supports still-sold-new hardware in 2025. Web search also found LKDDb pages showing both configs still present through 7.0-rc+HEAD. I found no removal-discussion evidence in web lore searches, so removal is not justified. Because the hardware is still sold but appears niche industrial/lab/embedded rather than broad new deployment, and the driver remains in staging/sysfs-era form, keep it but annotate rather than deprecate or remove.