STMicroelectronics SPEAr SoC clock controllers
Clock-tree controllers for STMicroelectronics' SPEAr family of ARM system-on-chips, including the SPEAr300/310/320 (ARM9-class) and SPEAr600/1310/1340 (Cortex-A9) parts that shipped into embedded and industrial gear in roughly 2010-2012. The code tells the rest of the kernel which oscillators, PLLs, and dividers feed each on-chip peripheral on those boards.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy: the SPEAr platform is aging early-2010s embedded silicon with little new deployment, yet the code is not abandoned — there were substantive fixes in 2022 and four clock-API conversions landed in 2025, the platform and machine symbols still exist in current kernels, and no removal thread is visible on the mailing list. Since the boards that depend on it have no drop-in replacement driver, removing it would strand existing users for no real maintenance gain.
repository signals
sources
- kernel.org
Kernel documentation identifies SPEAr as an STMicroelectronics ARM SoC family covering SPEAr300/310/320/600/1310/1340.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows the SPEAr platform support symbol persists across modern kernel series, including 6.x and 7.0-rc+HEAD.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows SPEAr1340 machine support remains present through recent kernel releases, indicating upstream support still exists for at least part of the family.
- linuxdevices.org
A 2011 launch-era article places SPEAr1310/1340 in the early-2010s embedded/industrial market, supporting the view that this is aging hardware rather than a current-growth platform.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local exec_command inspection of the directory and DTS refs shows this is real SPEAr SoC clock-provider code, not a helper library; `git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/clk/spear` shows substantive fixes in 2022 and four clock API conversions in 2025, so it is not abandoned. Web search obtained the kernel SPEAr overview and LKDDb pages showing the platform/MACH symbols still exist in current kernels. A web search on lore.kernel.org for `drivers/clk/spear` / `clk: spear` found no obvious active removal thread. The LinuxDevices URL was obtained by web search to anchor the family in 2010-2011 embedded markets. Net: old, low-deployment platform with occasional upstream maintenance and no like-for-like replacement driver, so keep it but annotate as legacy.