Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:53:35 +0100 From: Oskar Holmlund <eovholmlund@gmail.com> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Future of armv7 Message-ID: <CAP%2BnjbRbgB1LrpADgyJA3L%2Bqh5na31CQ=VRTsWH15HC2O-sqNw@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, In our(*) products we use FreeBSD current and it runs on an ARMv7 SoC. We have sold ~3k units on the current hardware generation and will be on the market until 2032:ish and then be in maintenance for another 10 years. Our products are used in the paper industry and are therefore used around the clock. We have not received any reports of instability originating from the operating system itself so far. All defects have been due to the application running on top of the operating system. In our case we will solve it even if ARMv7 support will be removed, we dont rely on the ports-tree neither the binary releases of FreeBSD. Just a couple more local patches that needs to be applied and maintained. Of course its sad to see it go away, it will be a little bit tricky to explain for people who care about the content of the SBOM that we actually still use FreeBSD current code even if the ARMv7 support is not present. Probably we will rename it to something else to avoid questions. From my point of view, ARMv7 still have a place in the world, especially in "embedded systems". Its fast enough to have a GUI up in less than 10s, do the thing it supposed to do and be rock solid. Of course ARMv7 is worthless to have as a build machine to build world or browse the web, but who will do something like that? :) The SoC vendors seems to have a similar view of their products for example NXP i.MX 6 is planned to be manufactured until December 2035 and AMD Zynq 7k until 2040. Maybe we can start cleaning up the ARM subtree, make sure we have developers interested in maintaining EVKs that are actually available in the market for new developers to build upon. We dont need to provide binaries, its enough that the code base compiles and is able to boot relevant EVKs to be interesting for developers to take it to the next level. (* I'm a long-time freelancer for the company that makes the machines, so technically it's not "ours", but having worked with them for the last 15 years, it's a bit "ours") -- Bästa Hälsningar Oskar Holmlund Tel 070-3220292help
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