Following the [1]initial Raspberry Pi 5 upstream support in Linux 6.12 providing basic support, an exciting Raspberry Pi addition with the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel is introducing a Raspberry Pi Camera Front-End "CFE" driver.

This new media driver is for the "Raspberry Pi RP1 Camera Front End (CFE) video capture support. Developed by Raspberry Pi and Ideas on Board, this media driver is for handling the Raspberry Pi CFE hardware block with front-end image signal processing, MIPI D-PHY, and MIPI CSI-2 receiver capabilities.

This CFE hardware block is found on the Raspberry Pi 5 within the RP1. More details within the [2]RP1 documentation .

The Raspberry Pi CFE driver in Linux 6.13 supports the V4L2 API for video capture and output device handling. This driver is gated by the VIDEO_RP1_CFE Kconfig build switch.

The Raspberry Pi CFE driver is the most notable change of the [3]media driver pull request for Linux 6.13 alongside an assortment of other minor driver updates. Some old and orphaned media drivers were also removed this cycle.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-RPi5-More-X1-Laptops

[2] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp1/rp1-peripherals.pdf

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241119090407.645ee267@foz.lan/