NVIDIA Tegra HDMI CEC controller
The HDMI Consumer Electronics Control block found on NVIDIA Tegra SoCs (Tegra114, Tegra124, Tegra210, and newer Tegra186/194 used in Jetson modules), which lets a Tegra-based device exchange remote-control and power-state messages with TVs and AV receivers over the HDMI cable. It is mainly relevant to set-top boxes, digital signage, and embedded systems built around Jetson hardware.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel but is worth flagging as a niche component. Tegra hardware is still sold new in 2025 (NVIDIA's Jetson lifecycle page lists Xavier and TX2 family modules with availability through 2027-2028), and the driver saw real upstream maintenance recently, including an April 2025 series adding Tegra186/194 support and 2023-2024 bug fixes. Actual CEC use on Tegra is uncommon, so deployment numbers are low even though the code is alive.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
April 2025 upstream patch adds Tegra186 and Tegra194 support to tegra-cec, showing current maintenance and interest in newer Tegra-based systems.
- lore.kernel.org
August 2024 upstream patch enabled module autoloading for tegra_cec, indicating non-trivial recent maintenance rather than abandonment.
- lore.kernel.org
August 2023 fix patch for platform_get_irq() shows bug-fix traffic in the driver.
- developer.nvidia.com
NVIDIA's Jetson lifecycle page shows Xavier NX, AGX Xavier, TX2 NX, and TX2i availability extending into 2027-2028+, so matching Tegra-based hardware remained on sale in 2025.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real platform driver: source has OF compatibles for nvidia,tegra114-cec, tegra124-cec, and tegra210-cec, and uses platform_driver registration (inspected via shell rg). Lore evidence came from mcp__lore_http__.lore_activity on drivers/media/cec/platform/tegra/tegra_cec.c; directory-level lore_file_timeline returned no hits, but file-level history showed 2023-2025 fixes/features and no removal discussion. NVIDIA lifecycle URL was obtained via web search on developer.nvidia.com. Because hardware is still sold in embedded/industrial niches but CEC on Tegra is a narrow use case, deployments look low; active upstream work means do not deprecate/remove, but annotate as niche.