Marvell/Aquantia AQR Multi-Gigabit Ethernet PHYs
A family of multi-gigabit (2.5G, 5G, and 10G) Ethernet physical-layer transceiver chips originally designed by Aquantia and now sold by Marvell after its 2019 acquisition. Parts like the AQR105, AQR113, AQR115, and AQR813 are widely used on motherboards, NICs, switches, and embedded gear that need NBASE-T copper Ethernet above 1 Gbps.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the hardware is actively sold and deployed in 2025, and the driver itself is under active development. Recent upstream commits added support for the new AQR115 part, introduced firmware-loading probe support, and fixed NVMEM probe deferral, all in 2025, which is a clear signal of an alive, maintained driver rather than a legacy one.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
The driver received a substantive fix in late 2025: "net: phy: aquantia: check for NVMEM deferral".
- git.kernel.org
The driver gained support for new hardware in 2025: "net: phy: aquantia: add support for AQR115".
- git.kernel.org
The driver added firmware-loading probe support in 2025, indicating ongoing feature work rather than retirement.
- marvell.com
Marvell's AQRate Gen4 product brief lists currently marketed AQR113/AQR114/AQR115/AQR813 family parts, showing the family remained an active product line into the mid-2020s.
- marvell.com
Marvell's Ethernet PHY portfolio page/product brief says its PHYs are used across enterprise, carrier, SMB, industrial and cloud infrastructure applications, supporting ongoing deployment.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real PHY driver: local `rg` on the directory found `module_phy_driver` and many supported IDs (AQ1202, AQR105/106/107/111/112/113/114C/115/813, etc.). Lore-first attempt via shell `lei q` was blocked because `lei` is not installed, and no `lore-http` MCP server was available; I fell back to local git history with `git -c safe.directory=... log`, which showed active 2025 maintenance and new-device enablement, with no local git grep hits suggesting deprecation/removal discussion. Marvell URLs were obtained by web search. Given active upstream work, recently added SKU support, and vendor evidence that these PHYs are still marketed/deployed, this should be kept rather than deprecated.