Allwinner A31 MIPI CSI-2 camera receiver
Handles the MIPI CSI-2 camera serial interface block found on Allwinner's A31, V3s, and related sun6i-family ARM SoCs, which shipped in tablets and embedded boards from roughly 2012 to 2014. It feeds image data from a MIPI camera sensor into the SoC's sun6i-csi capture pipeline so the system can grab video frames.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth flagging as a niche, low-deployment driver. The code is relatively new upstream (added in 2022) and pairs with the existing sun6i-csi capture pipeline, so it is not abandoned legacy baggage; however, the underlying A31-class Allwinner SoCs date to 2012-2014 and survive mainly in hobbyist boards and older embedded gear, so ongoing demand is modest.
repository signals
sources
- lwn.net
April 15, 2022 patch series added the Allwinner A31 MIPI CSI-2 controller driver and related bindings/MAINTAINERS entries, showing the driver is relatively new upstream code rather than abandoned legacy baggage.
- lwn.net
November 28, 2020 series describes the A31 MIPI CSI-2 controller as used on A31, V3s and probably V5, and includes V4L2 compliance results for the sun6i-csi + sun6i-mipi-csi2 pipeline.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_VIDEO_SUN6I_MIPI_CSI2 has been present from Linux 6.0 through current HEAD and matches DT compatible allwinner,sun6i-a31-mipi-csi2.
- linux-sunxi.org
linux-sunxi documents the Allwinner A31 as a sun6i SoC released in December 2012.
- prnewswire.com
Allwinner was still publicly marketing A31/A31s tablets in early 2014, supporting 2014 as roughly the tail end of wide new-device availability.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source inspection via `rg`/`sed` showed this directory is a real platform driver with `module_platform_driver()` and only `allwinner,sun6i-a31-mipi-csi2` in its OF match table. Local `git log` showed the driver was introduced in 2022 and last touched in 2023, with only small API-adaptation fixes afterward; that argues against immediate removal but also against strong ongoing demand. Lore MCP was unavailable and `lei` was not installed, so lore history was approximated with web search results on LWN's mailing-list mirrors; those showed introduction/support discussions but no removal series. Deployment judgment is an inference from the cited A31 release/market-window sources plus the lack of a newer replacement driver for this exact block: the hardware is old and likely limited to legacy/embedded boards, so keep the driver but annotate it as low-deployment rather than deprecate/remove.