Freescale/NXP i.MX23 and i.MX28 (MXS) clock controllers
Clock-tree support for the MXS family of low-power ARM9 application processors that Freescale (now NXP) introduced around 2010, namely the i.MX23 and i.MX28. These chips are widely used in industrial control, point-of-sale, medical, and embedded gateway products where long product lifetimes matter more than raw performance.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the underlying SoCs are still actively sold by NXP in 2025, with the i.MX280, i.MX285, and their evaluation kits all listed as active and covered by NXP's longevity program. The code itself is also still being maintained, with substantive fixes landing in 2024 and rate-selection cleanups in 2025, and there is no replacement since this is the SoC-specific clock controller for these parts.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Kernel tree directory is the MXS common-clock implementation for i.MX23/i.MX28 clock control blocks.
- nxp.com
NXP still listed i.MX280 as Active and in its longevity program in 2025-era web snapshots, indicating the SoC family is not purely historical.
- nxp.com
NXP still listed i.MX285 as Active, showing ongoing new-order availability within the i.MX28 family.
- nxp.com
NXP still exposed the i.MX28 EVK page as Active, consistent with ongoing embedded/industrial deployment rather than abandoned hardware.
- nxp.com
NXP still exposed the i.MX23 EVK page as Active, indicating at least some continued ecosystem presence for i.MX23-class hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: common-clock provider code with CLK_OF_DECLARE hooks for fsl,imx23-clkctrl and fsl,imx28-clkctrl (verified by local shell inspection). Upstream attention is low but not dead: local shell `git log` on this path showed substantive fixes in 2024 and multiple rate-selection cleanups in 2025, with no evidence gathered of an active removal series. Deployment looks medium rather than high: these are old Arm9 SoCs, but NXP web-search results still marked i.MX280/i.MX285 and related EVKs active, pointing to ongoing industrial/embedded use. No natural replacement driver exists because this code is the SoC-specific clock controller for MXS parts. URL provenance: NXP URLs were obtained via web search tool; kernel.org tree URL is canonical recall.