Faraday FTMAC100 and FTGMAC100 Ethernet controllers (including Aspeed BMC variants)
Two related Ethernet MAC designs from Faraday Technology: the older FTMAC100 10/100 controller used by Andes Technology SoCs, and the gigabit-capable FTGMAC100 that Aspeed integrated into its AST2400, AST2500, and AST2600 baseboard management chips found on a great many modern server motherboards for remote management.
recommendation
It should stay because the FTGMAC100 half drives current Aspeed BMC silicon still sold new in 2025 and shipped on contemporary server boards running OpenBMC, with active upstream patch activity in 2025 adding AST2600 RGMII delay support and RMII reset handling. The older FTMAC100 sub-driver remains a small, low-maintenance companion for legacy Andes parts and has no replacement, so removing it would gain nothing.
repository signals
sources
- aspeedtech.com
ASPEED still lists AST2600/AST2620 and AST2500/AST2520 in its current BMC product lineup, and states BMCs are used in servers, networks, and storage devices.
- aspeedtech.com
AST2600 is a current ASPEED server-management/BMC product, indicating FTGMAC100-backed hardware remained sold new in and beyond 2025.
- gerrit.openbmc.org
OpenBMC maintains an AST2600 EVB layer, showing ongoing real-world software deployment on AST2600 platforms.
- spinics.net
There was active netdev work on ftgmac100 in July 2025 ('Add optional reset control for RMII mode on Aspeed SoCs'), which argues against deprecation/removal.
- spinics.net
There was another 2025 patch series for ftgmac100 ('Add AST2600 RGMII delay into ftgmac100'), showing continued upstream feature work for current Aspeed hardware.
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps CONFIG_FTGMAC100 to Faraday FTGMAC100 and compatible strings including aspeed,ast2400-mac, aspeed,ast2500-mac, aspeed,ast2600-mac, and faraday,ftgmac100.
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps CONFIG_FTMAC100 to the older Faraday FTMAC100 10/100 controller and the andestech,atmac100 compatible, indicating a legacy but still-supported subfamily.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local inspection via `rg`/`sed` found two real platform drivers here: `ftmac100` and `ftgmac100`; `ftgmac100` matches Faraday plus Aspeed AST2400/2500/2600, while `ftmac100` matches `andestech,atmac100`. Local `git -c safe.directory=... log` shows sustained upstream maintenance through 2026-03-29, with a concentrated refactor/fix series on 2026-02-06 and no sign of removal churn. Web `search_query`/`open` found active 2025 netdev patch series for ftgmac100 and current ASPEED AST2600 product/OpenBMC evidence. Conclusion: the directory mixes one legacy 10/100 IP block with an actively maintained, still-deployed BMC MAC family; there is no natural replacement driver and no removal discussion found, so `keep` is the defensible recommendation.