Samsung OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND flash memory
Samsung OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND were a family of NAND flash chips with built-in SRAM buffers and a NOR-like interface, used in mid-2000s mobile phones and embedded boards including TI OMAP2/OMAP3 platforms and various Samsung SoCs. The kernel code drives these chips so Linux can boot from and store filesystems on them.
recommendation
A candidate for future removal because the underlying hardware is a mid-2000s flash technology that Samsung no longer markets for new designs and that survives mainly in aging embedded and industrial gear. Upstream still sees occasional patches in 2025, but only minor janitorial cleanups rather than real development, suggesting nobody is actively investing in it. There is no removal thread yet, so it is not on its way out today, but it is the kind of subsystem that could reasonably be retired once the remaining legacy users drop off.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still receives upstream touches as of 2025, but recent activity includes small cleanup work such as dropping an unused module alias rather than feature growth.
- cateee.net
LKDDb ties this code to legacy OneNAND support on OMAP2/OMAP3 platforms and shows the config still exists in current kernels.
- news.samsung.com
Samsung's official 2007 newsroom post describes OneNAND/Flex-OneNAND as a then-current mobile/3G-era flash product family, anchoring the technology in an older generation.
- semiconductor.samsung.com
Samsung maintains an official discontinued-product finder for retired semiconductor lines; together with the lack of current OneNAND marketing, this supports treating OneNAND as a legacy product family.
- semiconductor.samsung.com
Samsung's current semiconductor product site highlights modern memory lines and does not surface OneNAND as a current portfolio item, which is evidence against ongoing new-design relevance.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell inspection of local Kconfig/code confirmed this is real driver code for OneNAND devices on OMAP2/3 and Samsung SoCs. `lore_activity` on `drivers/mtd/nand/onenand/onenand_omap2.c` found 2023-2025 traffic, but it is sparse and mostly janitorial/treewide maintenance, so not dead enough for removal and not healthy enough for a plain keep. Web search found LKDDb coverage plus Samsung's 2007 official OneNAND announcement and current Samsung portfolio/discontinued pages; from those pages I infer the hardware family is long obsolete for new designs and surviving mostly in legacy embedded/industrial systems. A `lei q` attempt for removal-thread checking failed under sandbox socket restrictions, and no removal discussion surfaced from the lore evidence gathered, so I stop at `deprecate` rather than `remove`.