StarFive JH71xx Power Management Unit (PMU) controller
Controls the on-chip power management unit of StarFive's JH71xx family of RISC-V system-on-chip processors, most notably the JH7110 used in single-board computers such as the VisionFive 2 and PineTab-V. It gates power to SoC subsystems so the operating system can switch blocks on and off to save energy.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the JH7110 is a current RISC-V SoC that StarFive still markets in 2025 and that ships in actively used boards like the VisionFive 2 and PineTab-V. The driver is young, was added in 2023, has no replacement, and supports hardware that is still being sold new.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Upstream Linux contains a dedicated StarFive PM domain driver directory for JH71xx/JH7110 PMU support.
- git.kernel.org
The directory is new and saw its substantive activity concentrated around bring-up in 2023, with no obvious long-term decay/removal pattern from the path history.
- doc-en.rvspace.org
StarFive's JH7110 product brief was updated on 2024-08-29 and describes the SoC as a current Linux-capable product family.
- wiki.postmarketos.org
As of 2025-03-26, postmarketOS still tracks JH7110 devices such as the VisionFive 2 and PineTab-V, indicating ongoing hobbyist/board-level deployment.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory confirmed by local file read via exec_command: the sole C file identifies itself as 'StarFive JH71XX PMU Controller Driver'. Upstream activity was checked with local path history via exec_command (`git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/pmdomain/starfive`), which shows bring-up/addition commits in 2023 and no removal-oriented churn; canonical kernel.org tree/log URLs are cited for stable source URLs. Deployment evidence came from web search + open on StarFive's official JH7110 product brief and the postmarketOS JH7110 wiki page. Net: this is a young SoC-support driver for hardware still sold/new in 2025, with low but real current deployment and no natural replacement driver, so deprecation/removal is not indicated.