Sony PlayStation 3 platform support (Cell Broadband Engine)
Platform glue for running Linux on the Sony PlayStation 3 game console, which shipped from 2006 to 2016 and was built around IBM's Cell Broadband Engine processor. The code handles PS3-specific subsystems such as the system manager, the AV/video setup chip, and the hypervisor-mediated system bus that Linux guests used during the console's "OtherOS" era.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy because the PlayStation 3 was discontinued in 2016 and is no longer sold new, yet the code still receives occasional real maintenance upstream (build fixes in 2023, minor cleanups in 2024) rather than removal patches. Hobbyists running Linux on PS3 hardware still rely on it, so removing it would have no upside while breaking a small but real community.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
PS3 driver code in this directory still received targeted upstream maintenance in 2023, not just treewide churn.
- lore.kernel.org
Another 2023 fix touched drivers/ps3/ps3av.c, showing the code is still build-fixed and adjusted for current kernel APIs.
- lore.kernel.org
The directory saw additional upstream attention in 2024, albeit minor comment cleanup rather than removal work.
- en.wikipedia.org
The hardware platform is a discontinued game console generation and not sold new in 2025; remaining use is legacy/hobbyist.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: multiple .c files with ps3_system_bus driver entry points. Lore evidence came from mcp__lore_http__.lore_activity on drivers/ps3/ps3av.c and drivers/ps3/{sys-manager-core.c,ps3-sys-manager.c}; those yielded the cited lore URLs. A lore_file_timeline probe on drivers/ps3/ returned no matches, so it was not useful for directory-level removal signals. A lore_regex removal-subject probe timed out, and a shell lei query was blocked by sandbox socket permissions, so removal-talk evidence is incomplete. Deployment/EOL evidence uses canonical recall of the stable Wikipedia PS3 page. Overall: hardware is clearly obsolete and not entering new deployments, but upstream still shows occasional maintenance rather than an active removal push, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy.