XPost: linux.debian.ports.arm, linux.debian.devel.release 
 From: arnd@arndb.de 
  
 On Mon, Oct 27, 2025, at 12:31, Adrian Bunk wrote: 
 > On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 11:20:29AM +0100, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote: 
 >> W dniu 27.10.2025 o 01:15, Jan-Daniel Kaplanski pisze: 
 >> 
 >> > Besides, the armhf baseline of armv7-a+fp aligns with the Cortex-A8 
 >> > from 2005[2]. I highly doubt that archaic architecture has a lot of 
 >> > users besides SBCs up to the generation of RPi 2 and legacy embedded 
 >> > systems that are likely EOL too. Especially since aarch64 came in 
 >> > 2012 with armv8-a on the Cortex-A53/A57[3][4]. 
 >> 
 >> Many people would love to see arm32 go away. Market is still against us 
 and 
 >> arm32 is still sold and used. 
  
 I think it's important to understand the nuance here, as it's easy 
 to get mixed up. These things can be true simultaneously: 
  
 - There are countless embedded systems running Debian/armhf that still 
 expect 
   to need support for many years to come. 
 - Chips like i.MX6 (released in 2011) is still being deployed in new boards 
   this year and will ship until 2036, similar to expected supported lives 
   for STM32 and Microchip SAMA7 products and others. 
 - Most companies that have shipped i.MX6 based boards in the past are now 
   shipping 64-bit i.MX8 for newer products. 
 - There are several still new Cortex-A7 based low-end chips every year 
 - Almost every SoC company that shipped a Cortex-A7 based SoC in the 
   past has replaced that with a Cortex-A35 in the last 5 years. 
 - Until about 2021, the majority of new embedded machines were ARMv7, 
   now it's about 10-20%, but that's still more than 64-bit RISC-V. 
 - As far as I can tell, the new Cortex-A7 based chips tend to not 
   run Debian, since they are made for the ultra-low-cost market, 
   where you'd rather spend the development fit into smaller RAM 
   with a custom build 
  
 >> There could be one change done to armhf: enabling NEON by default as 
 Tegra2 
 >> is long time gone. 
 >>... 
 > 
 > Atmel SAMA5D3 is still in production, and popular for low-end embedded 
 devices. 
  
 SAMA5D3 is an interesting corner case, possibly the only ARMv7+VFPv3d16 
 chip you can still buy after the end of Tegra2 and ArmadaXP (which still 
 have users). 
  
 I would still agree with Marcin here: SAMA5D3 was Atmel's first attempt 
 at an ARMv7 chip back in 2013, and everything after it had NEON including 
 the 2014 SAMA4D4 and of course all the SAMA7. It only has DDR2/LPDDR2 
 support, which means it's no longer cost-effective compared to newer 
 chips with DDR3. I would expect even SAM9X7 to be much more popular 
 than SAM5A3 in ongoing production: SAM9X7 is only an ARM926 and won't 
 run anything newer than Trixie/Armel, but it does have modern I/O 
 and DDR3 memory. If dropping SAM9x7 (along with all other v5/v6) 
 support made sense for sid, then so should dropping support for the 
 SAMA5D3/vfpv3d16. 
  
       Arnd 
  
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