ASPEED AST2400/2500/2600/2700 BMC clock controllers
Provides clock control for ASPEED's AST24xx, AST25xx, AST26xx, and AST27xx system-on-chips, which are the baseboard management controllers (BMCs) embedded on the motherboards of most modern servers to handle remote power, monitoring, and console access. ASPEED dominates the server BMC market, and the AST2700 is its current 8th-generation part still being sampled to OEMs in 2025-2026.
recommendation
It should stay because ASPEED's BMC chips are the dominant baseboard management controllers in modern servers, and this code is under active development: the directory itself was freshly carved out in late 2025 specifically to host new AST2700 support, with patches landing in clk-next in February 2026 and follow-up fixes arriving shortly after. ASPEED still sells the AST2600 and the newer AST2700 family as current products, so this clock driver is essential for booting and managing huge numbers of servers shipping today.
repository signals
sources
- spinics.net
Ryan Chen's v16 patch series in December 2025 adds AST2700 support and explicitly reorganizes ASPEED clock drivers into drivers/clk/aspeed for future additions, indicating active upstream investment rather than retirement.
- spinics.net
Stephen Boyd replied on February 2, 2026 that the ASPEED clock updates, including the subdirectory reorganization and new driver support, were pulled into clk-next.
- spinics.net
A February 18, 2026 fix patch targets drivers/clk/aspeed/clk-ast2700.c, showing ongoing post-merge maintenance activity.
- aspeedtech.com
ASPEED's server-management product page still lists AST2600/2620 and AST2700/2720/2750 as current server-management/BMC products, with AST2700-series marked 'Sample Ongoing'.
- aspeedtech.com
AST2700 is marketed by ASPEED as its 8th-generation server-management/BMC SoC, confirming the family is current-generation hardware rather than legacy-only.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection showed this is a real common-clock driver directory with Kconfig entries for ASPEED BMC SoCs and AST2700. Local git log showed the directory itself is new because the code was moved into a subdirectory in late 2025, so the young directory age is not evidence of obsolescence. Public history was obtained via web search because `lei` was unavailable: spinics result msg5978616 shows a long-running AST2700 enablement series and the explicit subdirectory split for future maintenance; msg6033908 shows clk-next pull acceptance on 2026-02-02; msg6054087 shows a follow-up fix on 2026-02-18. Vendor deployment evidence was obtained via web search on aspeedtech.com pages showing AST2600 and AST2700-series products still sold/current. No natural replacement driver exists for the same ASPEED BMC clock-control role; newer SoCs extend this directory instead of replacing it.