Qualcomm SoC PHY drivers (USB, PCIe, UFS, DisplayPort, Ethernet)
Low-level PHY (physical-layer) controllers built into Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile SoCs and IPQ networking chips, covering USB 2.0/3.0, eUSB2 repeaters, PCIe, UFS storage, DisplayPort/eDP, and the QMP serdes blocks used on recent Snapdragon laptops, phones, and Wi-Fi router platforms through 2025.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because it underpins essentially every modern Qualcomm SoC shipping today, including current Snapdragon phones, laptops, and IPQ networking silicon. The directory sees very heavy ongoing maintenance (hundreds of commits in the last five years from dozens of contributors, with 2024-2025 Qualcomm copyrights on new files like the M31 eUSB2 PHY and v8 QMP serdes headers), so removal is not on the table.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Kconfig shows this directory covers a broad, current Qualcomm PHY stack including QMP, QUSB2, M31, eUSB2 repeater, and IPQ5332 UNIPHY PCIe support rather than a single legacy part.
- git.kernel.org
The M31 eUSB2 PHY driver source carries 2024-2025 Qualcomm Innovation Center copyright, indicating ongoing enablement for recent Qualcomm platforms.
- git.kernel.org
V8 QMP register headers are present with 2025 Qualcomm copyright, consistent with active support for newer PHY generations.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory. Local shell inspection (`rg --files`, `sed`) showed many Qualcomm PHY drivers and Kconfig entries spanning USB, PCIe, UFS, DP/eDP, IPQ, QMP, QUSB2, and M31. Supplied static history shows very high recent activity (631 substantive commits in 5y, 71 authors, most recent 2026-02-27), which argues strongly against deprecation. A shell attempt to query lore via `lei q` failed because `lei` is not installed, so no direct lore removal-thread URL was obtained; removal risk is therefore inferred from the absence of any static removal signal plus strong recent maintenance. Source URLs above are canonical-recall kernel.org tree pages matching the files inspected locally. Modern Qualcomm SoCs and networking chips still ship with these PHY blocks, so deployments remain high and there is no single replacement driver for the directory as a whole.