Inside Secure Microread NFC controllers
Near-field communication controller chips made by Inside Secure in the early 2010s, used in some embedded designs and as the NFC radio behind Intel's Management Engine Interface on Intel 8 and 9 Series PC chipsets. They handled contactless payment, tag reading, and peer-to-peer NFC at a time when NFC was just arriving in laptops and industrial gear.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the hardware was last commercially relevant around 2012-2013 and survives mainly in aging Intel laptops and older embedded deployments. Upstream still carries the code and it received cleanup commits as recently as 2024, so it is not abandoned, but new systems do not ship with these chips and activity is maintenance-only rather than feature work.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Lore history shows the driver still received upstream maintenance in the last several years, but the visible traffic is cleanup-level rather than feature growth.
- docs.kernel.org
Kernel documentation says Microread can sit behind Intel MEI on Intel 8 and 9 Series chipsets, indicating surviving deployment on older PC platforms rather than current mainstream hardware.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows the Microread I2C support remains present in current kernels, confirming the driver is still shipped upstream.
- nfcw.com
MicroRead was a commercially relevant NFC controller family in the early-2010s, with certification and shipment claims anchored to that era.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: Kconfig and module entry points cover Inside Secure Microread NFC over I2C and MEI. Local source/Kconfig inspection via shell showed legacy-oriented I2C plus Intel MEI bindings. lore_file_timeline on drivers/nfc/microread/microread.c returned 2021 cleanup traffic and no removal evidence surfaced in lore within this pass; static metadata supplied by the user says substantive touches continued through 2024-06-21, so this is not abandoned. Web search found current kernel docs limiting MEI use to Intel 8/9 Series-era platforms and LKDDb confirming upstream presence; web search also found only early-2010s commercial references for the hardware. Conclusion: hardware is effectively legacy and likely only in old embedded/industrial or aging Intel-client deployments, but upstream still carries it and recent activity argues against deprecate/remove. URL acquisition: lore URL from mcp__lore_http__.lore_file_timeline; docs.kernel.org and cateee/NFCW URLs from web search.