Rockchip RK3288/RK3328/RK3399 on-SoC crypto accelerator
A hardware cryptographic engine built into several popular Rockchip ARM SoCs (RK3288, RK3328, and RK3399) used in single-board computers, TV boxes, Chromebooks, and industrial gear from roughly 2014 onward. It offloads symmetric ciphers and hashing from the CPU so embedded Linux devices can do TLS, disk encryption, and similar workloads more efficiently.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the underlying SoCs are still in active mass production according to Rockchip's own product pages, the boards built around them remain widely deployed, and the driver continues to receive real upstream maintenance, including a 2023 crypto_engine rework and 2024 bug fixes. No other driver covers this on-chip accelerator, so removing it would leave existing hardware without acceleration.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still receives non-mechanical bug-fix traffic; a Rockchip rk3288 crypto NULL-pointer fix was posted in 2024.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver saw substantive functional maintenance in 2023 via crypto_engine interface rework.
- rock-chips.com
Rockchip's RK3328 product page lists the SoC state as 'MP Now', indicating ongoing mass-production availability.
- rock-chips.com
Rockchip's RK3399 product page lists the SoC state as 'MP Now', indicating ongoing mass-production availability.
- opensource.rock-chips.com
Rockchip's published mainline/open-source status matrix shows Crypto support for RK3288, RK3328, and RK3399.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell inspection of local source showed this is a real platform driver and that it binds rockchip,rk3288-crypto / rk3328-crypto / rk3399-crypto. lore_activity on rk3288_crypto.c returned recent real maintenance (2023 functional rework, 2024 bug fixes, 2024 callback API churn), so upstream attention is active. lore_regex over removal/deprecation subject patterns produced no rockchip-crypto removal thread; the hits were unrelated subsystems, so there is no evidence of active removal discussion. Web search found current Rockchip product pages for RK3328 and RK3399 marked 'MP Now', which supports hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025=true. Deployment is medium rather than high because these are older ARM SoCs mostly seen in SBC, embedded, and industrial designs rather than new mainstream PCs/servers. Sources were obtained via lore-http MCP, web search, and local shell inspection; no replacement driver covers the same on-SoC accelerator block.