Broadcom BCM SoC and Raspberry Pi clock controllers
Clock controller support for Broadcom system-on-chip families, including the BCM2711 and BCM2835 used in Raspberry Pi boards, the BCM63xx home-router line, and the Kona and iProc embedded SoCs. These drivers configure and gate the on-chip clock trees that every other peripheral on the SoC depends on to run.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because these clock controllers are essential for booting current Broadcom-based platforms, most visibly the Raspberry Pi family. Compute Module 4 and 4S boards built on BCM2711 are guaranteed in production until at least 2034, and upstream patches are still landing as recently as 2026. Removing this code would break Raspberry Pi and other embedded Broadcom systems that have no generic substitute.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream maintenance is still landing for this directory via clk: bcm: rpi changes in April 2026.
- lore.kernel.org
The BCM/Raspberry Pi clock code is seeing nontrivial active development, including a v7 patch series in March 2026.
- raspberrypi.com
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 uses Broadcom BCM2711 and is stated to remain in production until at least January 2034.
- raspberrypi.com
Compute Module 4S is another BCM2711 product still marketed for industrial customers, with production promised until at least January 2034.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
`drivers/clk/bcm` is real SoC clock-driver code, not helper-only content. Local inspection of `drivers/clk/bcm/Kconfig` shows live support for BCM2711/BCM2835, BCM63xx, Kona, and iProc families, including `CLK_RASPBERRYPI`. Upstream activity was checked with `mcp__lore_http__.lore_file_timeline` on `drivers/clk/bcm/clk-raspberrypi.c`, which returned dense 2022-2026 traffic and recent lore URLs above; this argues against deprecation or removal. Deployment evidence came from `web.search_query` on official Raspberry Pi product pages showing BCM2711 CM4/CM4S still sold and supported into 2034. Because these are board/SoC-specific clock drivers, there is no generic replacement driver; removal would strand current Raspberry Pi and embedded Broadcom platforms.