Marvell/Intel PXA2xx and PXA3xx SoC clock controller
Clock tree management for the Intel/Marvell PXA25x, PXA27x, and PXA3xx XScale-based application processors that powered early-2000s PDAs, handhelds, and embedded devices such as the Sharp Zaurus line. These chips were mainstream from roughly 2002 through 2008 and are now found mostly in legacy industrial gear and hobbyist retro-mobile projects.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the PXA SoC family hasn't shipped in new designs since around 2008, yet the clock code is still wired into supported ARM device trees and picked up real bug fixes as recently as 2023 (including a NULL-pointer fix in pxa3xx_clk_update_accr and a determine_rate hook addition). Removing it now would break the handful of Zaurus-era and embedded PXA boards that still build from mainline, so it should stay until the surrounding ARCH_PXA platform is itself retired.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
`COMMON_CLK_PXA` is still present upstream and described as support for the Marvell PXA SoC clock driver.
- git.kernel.org
ARM still exposes `ARCH_PXA` and DT support for PXA25x, PXA27x, and PXA3xx platforms, indicating the platform remains buildable upstream.
- git.kernel.org
Upstream DT still contains a PXA27x clock provider node compatible with `marvell,pxa270-clocks`, showing the clock driver is still wired into supported DTS files.
- git.kernel.org
The driver received a real bug fix in 2023 (`clk: pxa: fix NULL pointer dereference in pxa3xx_clk_update_accr`), which is evidence of ongoing maintenance rather than abandonment.
- git.kernel.org
The driver also received functional clock-framework work (`clk: pxa: Add a determine_rate hook`), reinforcing that recent activity was not purely mechanical.
- en.wikipedia.org
The PXA25x/PXA27x/PXA3xx families are early-2000s XScale-era SoCs, with PXA products primarily associated with 2002-2006 mobile/PDA designs.
- en.wikipedia.org
A representative Linux PXA device family, Sharp Zaurus, was discontinued in December 2008, supporting the view that modern deployments are legacy/hobbyist rather than new-volume products.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory, not a helper library: local shell inspection found PXA25x/PXA27x/PXA3xx clock code plus `CLK_OF_DECLARE` hooks. Lore-first check was attempted via shell `lei q`, but `lei` is unavailable in this environment; I fell back to local upstream history (`git log -c safe.directory`) and found substantive 2021-2023 fixes, with no visible removal signal. Kernel.org URLs are canonical-recall pages corresponding to the locally inspected upstream files/commits; Wikipedia URLs were obtained via web search. Recommendation is `keep-annotate` because the hardware is clearly obsolete and not a 2025 new-sales target, but the driver still has upstream build integration and recent bug-fix activity, so deprecation/removal would be premature.