Re: [PATCH v2 17/19] ARM: mark Cortex-M3/M4/M7 based boards as deprecated

[Nicolas Ferre <nicolas.ferre@microchip.com>]

On 01/07/2026 at 23:23, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> 
> The Cortex-M3/M4/M7 cores were designed as a replacement for the earlier
> ARM7TDMI and ARM9TDMI microarchitectures used in older microcontrollers.
> 
> At the moment, Linux can run these cores either when they are integrated
> into a larger SoC, or as standalone microcontrollers. While there was
> a lot of development work going into Cortex-M support from 2011 to 2016,
> this largely stopped when it became clear that Zephyr and other RTOS
> had taken over that market. To date, the only Cortex-M based based
> microcontroller boards supported upstream are reference implementations.
> 
> Schedule these for removal after the next LTS kernel, so if any users
> remain that want to update their kernels, they can stay on that
> version for a few years before having to maintain the platform support
> out of tree.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> ---
>   arch/arm/Kconfig            |  8 ++++++--
>   arch/arm/mach-at91/Kconfig  |  4 +++-
>   arch/arm/mach-imx/Kconfig   |  4 +++-
>   arch/arm/mach-stm32/Kconfig | 14 ++++++++------
>   4 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

[..]

> diff --git a/arch/arm/mach-at91/Kconfig b/arch/arm/mach-at91/Kconfig
> index c5ef27e3cd8f..cb0e3ff8e0ca 100644
> --- a/arch/arm/mach-at91/Kconfig
> +++ b/arch/arm/mach-at91/Kconfig
> @@ -15,13 +15,15 @@ menuconfig ARCH_AT91
> 
>   if ARCH_AT91
>   config SOC_SAMV7
> -       bool "SAM Cortex-M7 family" if ARM_SINGLE_ARMV7M
> +       bool "SAM Cortex-M7 family (DEPRECATED)" if ARM_SINGLE_ARMV7M
>          select COMMON_CLK_AT91
>          select PINCTRL_AT91
>          help
>            Select this if you are using an SoC from Microchip's SAME7, SAMS7 or SAMV7
>            families.
> 
> +         This platform is scheduled for removal in early 2027

Acked-by: Nicolas Ferre <nicolas.ferre@microchip.com>

> +
>   config SOC_SAMA5D2
>          bool "SAMA5D2 family"
>          depends on ARCH_MULTI_V7

[..]

Thanks, regards,
   Nicolas