NXP PN71xx NCI Near-Field Communication controllers
A family of NFC (Near-Field Communication) controller chips from NXP — including the PN544, PN547, PN7150, and the still-current PN7160 — used in smartphones, tablets, point-of-sale terminals, and embedded readers for contactless payments, transit cards, and tag reading. The chips attach over I2C and speak the standardised NFC Controller Interface (NCI) protocol.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth annotating its scope. The code supports NXP's PN544/PN547/PN7150/PN7160 NFC reader chips over I2C, and NXP still sells the PN7160 and its development kits as active products with Linux support in 2025. Upstream is receiving routine fixes, not removal patches. The caveat is that the older PN7150 part is now flagged Not Recommended for New Designs, with NXP steering customers to the PN7160 — but both share this same driver, so there is nothing to migrate to.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Upstream path is still seeing non-removal maintenance; local git history for this directory shows substantive fixes and cleanups through 2026-03-17, with no deletion history found.
- nxp.com
NXP lists PN7160 as Active, with I2C/SPI host interface and Linux support, indicating the NXP-NCI class is still in current production.
- nxp.com
NXP still sells PN7160 development kits marked Active, with Linux support and current stock, indicating ongoing new-design and evaluation use.
- nxp.com
Older PN7150-family parts are now Not Recommended for New Designs and NXP recommends PN7160 instead, suggesting this driver spans both legacy and still-current family members rather than being wholly obsolete.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: core.c/firmware.c/i2c.c plus module_i2c_driver and ACPI IDs NXP1001/NXP1002/NXP7471 were confirmed via local shell `rg`. No lore MCP endpoint was available in this environment, so upstream activity was checked with local `git -c safe.directory=... log` on the directory; the git.kernel.org URL is canonical recall for the same path. NXP product/development-kit pages were obtained via web search and show current PN7160-family availability and Linux support. Because upstream maintenance is recent and current hardware exists, removal/deprecation is not justified; annotate only because part of the covered PN71xx family (notably PN7150) is already NRND and vendor guidance shifts new designs to PN7160, but there is no distinct upstream replacement driver.