Marvell Armada, Berlin, and PXA SoC PHY controllers
Low-level PHY controllers built into Marvell's Armada, Berlin, and PXA system-on-chip families, providing the analog and serdes plumbing for USB, SATA, and high-speed COMPHY lanes used by Ethernet and PCIe. These SoCs are common in routers, NAS boxes, and embedded networking gear, with hardware shipping from the early 2010s through products still sold new today.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because these are the low-level signal-conditioning blocks inside Marvell Armada-class system-on-chips, and that silicon is still going into new products in 2025: MikroTik ships the RB5009 router on Armada 88F7040, and SolidRun continues to sell Marvell networking evaluation kits. Upstream PHY mailing-list traffic was still touching these files as recently as 2026, and there is no replacement since this code is SoC-specific glue.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
At least part of this directory is still seeing upstream maintenance activity in 2026; linux-phy traffic touched Marvell COMPHY files as part of a phy-core update series.
- mikrotik.com
A current retail router product page lists Marvell Armada 88F7040, indicating Armada-class Marvell SoCs that rely on this PHY family remain in new deployments.
- shop.solid-run.com
SolidRun still sells a Marvell networking evaluation kit with lead time and add-to-cart availability, supporting ongoing embedded/networking deployments of related Marvell SoC platforms.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell inspection of local Kconfig/Makefile identified this as a real Marvell SoC PHY driver directory spanning Armada/Berlin/PXA blocks, not a helper library. I used lore_activity on representative active files (`phy-mvebu-cp110-comphy.c`, `phy-mvebu-a3700-comphy.c`) and cited the returned lore URL; it shows current 2026 linux-phy traffic, which argues against deprecation. A broad lore removal regex timed out and `lei q` subject searches for remove/deprecate terms returned no hits, so removal discussion was not evidenced in the sampled history. I used web search plus page open on MikroTik and SolidRun product/store pages to confirm Marvell Armada/CN913x-class hardware is still marketed for routers/embedded networking. Because these PHY drivers are SoC-specific glue for still-deployed hardware, there is no natural replacement driver; some sub-blocks are legacy, but the directory as a whole should be kept.