Re: [PATCH v2 17/19] ARM: mark Cortex-M3/M4/M7 based boards as deprecated
From: Nicolas Ferre
Date: Thu Jul 02 2026 - 03:43:42 EST
On 01/07/2026 at 23:23, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
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@xxxxxxxx>
---
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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+
config SOC_SAMA5D2
bool "SAMA5D2 family"
depends on ARCH_MULTI_V7
[..]
Thanks, regards,
Nicolas