Re: [PATCH] nios2: remove the architecture

Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]> Mon, 18 May 2026 12:57:35 +0200

Newsgroups	org.kernel.vger.workflows,org.kernel.vger.dmaengine,org.kernel.vger.linux-arch,org.kernel.vger.linux-csky,org.kernel.vger.linux-devicetree,org.kernel.vger.linux-doc,org.kernel.vger.linux-hardening,org.kernel.vger.linux-i2c,org.kernel.vger.linux-iio,org.kernel.vger.linux-kbuild,org.kernel.vger.linux-pci,org.kernel.vger.linux-pwm,org.kernel.vger.netdev
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Mon, May 18, 2026 at 11:29:48AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Mon, May 18, 2026, at 06:28, Ethan Nelson-Moore wrote:
> > The Nios II architecture is a soft-core architecture developed by
> > Altera (since acquired by Intel) and intended to run on their FPGAs.
> >
> > Licenses for the architecture have not been available for purchase
> > since 2024 [1], and support for it has been removed from GCC 15 [2],
> > Buildroot [3], and QEMU [4].
> >
> > Given all of these factors, it is time to remove Nios II support from
> > the kernel. The maintainer stated in 2024 that they were planning to do
> > so soon [5], but this did not come to pass.
> >
> > Remove Nios II support from the kernel and move the former maintainer
> > to CREDITS. Thank you, Dinh Nguyen, for maintaining Nios II support!
> 
> Hi Ethan,
> 
> We last discussed this a year ago when Simon Schuster mentioned[1]
> that Siemens Energy is still using NIOS-2 in production and would
> prefer to have this still included in Linux for at least another
> few years until the obligation for kernel updates ends.

Isn't that what we have LTS branches for?