STMicroelectronics ST95HF NFC transceiver
An SPI-attached 13.56 MHz NFC/RFID transceiver chip from STMicroelectronics, used in industrial readers, access-control panels, and embedded products that need to read contactless smart cards and NFC tags. It saw most of its design wins in the 2010s and is now a legacy part kept in production for existing customers.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the ST95HF is now marked "Not Recommended for New Design" by STMicroelectronics and has effectively dropped off distributor shelves, yet it is still produced for existing industrial and embedded customers and received genuine maintenance patches in 2024. No other in-tree driver covers this specific SPI-attached NFC reader, so removing it would strand the boards that still use it.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still received a targeted functional cleanup in 2024 ('switch to using sleeping variants of gpiod API'), indicating ongoing upstream maintenance rather than abandonment.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver saw additional non-mechanical 2024 maintenance ('Switch to using gpiod API'), consistent with active bug-fix/API adaptation traffic.
- st.com
ST lists ST95HF as NRND ('Not recommended for New Design'), still in volume production for ongoing customers, with no distributor availability reported on the product page.
- st.com
The matching ST evaluation kit EVAL-ST95HF is also marked NRND, reinforcing that the platform is legacy rather than a growth design.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate: lore_file_timeline on drivers/nfc/st95hf/core.c showed 2024 maintenance patches, and no removal evidence was found in the returned history. Deployment looks legacy/industrial-low-volume: web search plus direct page open/find on ST product and eval pages showed NRND status; the product page still says volume production/Buy Direct, so sold-new-in-2025 is kept true, but 'widely available' is inferred to have ended by about 2024 because ST reports no distributor stock. No natural in-tree replacement driver covers the exact same ST95HF SPI NFC transceiver use case.