Marvell Berlin and Synaptics AS370 SoC pin controllers
Pin multiplexing and configuration support for Marvell's Berlin family of ARM SoCs (the ARMADA 1500 series used in Google TV boxes and Chromecast-class devices around 2012-2016) and the Synaptics AS370 chip launched in 2019 for smart-home and voice-enabled embedded gadgets after Synaptics absorbed Marvell's multimedia line.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy because the underlying SoCs are no longer sold in new designs and Synaptics has moved on to its Astra processor line, yet the code still receives genuine maintenance: a memory-leak fix was posted in June 2025 and backported to stable kernels in August 2025, showing real deployed systems still depend on it. Low deployment today, but no removal discussion is in flight.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream still saw real maintenance in 2025: a berlin pinctrl memory-leak fix was posted on linux-gpio on 2025-06-20.
- lore.kernel.org
That 2025 berlin pinctrl fix was backported to stable, indicating the driver still matters for existing deployed systems.
- synaptics.com
Synaptics publicly launched the AS3xx family in 2019 for smart-home / voice-enabled devices; this matches the AS370 support in this directory and points to an embedded-IoT niche rather than a new mainstream platform in 2025.
- marvell.com
Marvell ARMADA 1500/Berlin-era SoCs were marketed for Google TV / connected-home devices as early as 2012, consistent with these being older consumer-media SoCs rather than current-volume new designs.
- synaptics.com
Current Synaptics public product navigation emphasizes newer processor families such as Astra Embedded Processors, with no obvious AS3xx family prominence on the main product surface.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not an early-exit case: this directory contains real SoC pinctrl drivers (confirmed via local exec_command reading Kconfig and source filenames). lore_file_timeline on drivers/pinctrl/berlin/berlin.c showed ongoing activity through 2025, including a real bug fix and stable backports; a lore_regex query for removal/deprecation talk timed out, so I did not retry that same query. Web search produced the cited Synaptics 2019 AS3xx launch page, older Marvell ARMADA 1500/Berlin product pages, and the current Synaptics homepage. Conclusion: hardware family is old and likely low-volume/legacy by 2025, but upstream still sees bug-fix traffic and there is no concrete removal evidence, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy/low-deployment.