Broadcom BCM4313/43224/43225 802.11n SoftMAC Wi-Fi
Broadcom's first generation of open-source 802.11n PCIe Wi-Fi chips, including the BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225, which shipped in laptops and embedded boards starting around 2010. These are SoftMAC parts that hand most 802.11 work to the host CPU via mac80211, and they were superseded by Broadcom's later FullMAC (brcmfmac) generations.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the hardware stopped being widely available around 2014 and Broadcom's newer chips use the separate brcmfmac driver, yet brcmsmac still sees upstream cleanup work as recently as 2026 and there is no replacement that covers these specific BCM4313/43224/43225 parts. A residual installed base of older laptops still depends on it, as reflected in current Linux Wireless and Debian documentation.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
brcmsmac still receives upstream changes in 2026; recent patch touched mac80211_if.c.
- wireless.docs.kernel.org
Linux Wireless documentation lists brcmsmac as the driver for BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225 PCIe/AXI chips, and notes BCM4313 is not fully supported.
- wiki.debian.org
A current distro wiki still documents these devices as Broadcom BCM4313/BCM43224/BCM43225 hardware requiring brcmsmac/brcm80211 support, consistent with legacy installed-base use.
- phoronix.com
Broadcom publicly introduced the open-source 802.11n driver for BCM4313/BCM43224/BCM43225 in 2010, indicating this is a 2010-era chipset family rather than current retail hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver: local Kconfig/sources inspected with shell (`rg`, `sed`) show `CONFIG_BRCMSMAC` = 'Broadcom IEEE802.11n PCIe SoftMAC WLAN driver' and code references BCM4313/43224/43225/43236. Lore evidence came from `lore_file_timeline` on `brcmsmac/mac80211_if.c`, which showed active 2025-2026 maintenance (e.g. 2026 FAM cleanup), so this is not abandoned and should not be removed. An attempted `lore_regex` search for removal/deprecation subjects timed out and `lore_nearest` lacked an embedding index; with no positive removal evidence and clear recent maintenance, I back off from deprecate/remove. Deployment looks low, not none: web search found current Linux Wireless and Debian documentation for these BCM4313/43224/43225 802.11n parts, which suggests a residual legacy laptop/embedded installed base. `hardware_still_sold_new_in_2025=false` and `last_widely_available_year=2014` are inference from the cited 2010 launch-era source plus the fact the documented chips are old 802.11n PCIe parts rather than current vendor offerings. No clean upstream replacement driver covers the same chips universally, so `replacement_driver` is null. URL provenance: lore URL from `lore_file_timeline`; Linux Wireless, Debian Wiki, and Phoronix URLs from `web.search_query`.