FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE Hardware Notes

+ +

The FreeBSD Documentation Project

+ +

$FreeBSD: +release/9.1.0/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware/article.sgml 243705 2012-11-30 +16:15:35Z hrs $
+

+ +

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.

+ +

AMD, Am486, Am5X86, AMD Athlon, AMD Duron, AMD Opteron, AMD-K6, Athlon, Élan, +Opteron, and PCnet are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

+ +

Fujitsu, the Fujitsu logo, LifeBook, Stylistic, PRIMEPOWER, PRIMEQUEST, PRIMECLUSTER, +ETERNUS, TRIOLE, ESPRIMO, BioMedCAChe, CAChe, CELLINJECTOR, isS, Materials Explorer, +SystemWalker, and Interstage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited +in the United States and other countries.

+ +

IBM, AIX, EtherJet, Netfinity, OS/2, PowerPC, PS/2, S/390, and ThinkPad are trademarks +of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or +both.

+ +

Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or +registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and +other countries.

+ +

SPARC, SPARC64, SPARCengine, and UltraSPARC are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc +in the United States and other countries. SPARC International, Inc owns all of the SPARC +trademarks and under licensing agreements allows the proper use of these trademarks by +its members.

+ +

Sun, Sun Microsystems, Java, Java Virtual Machine, JavaServer Pages, JDK, JRE, JSP, +JVM, Netra, OpenJDK, Solaris, StarOffice, Sun Blade, Sun Enterprise, Sun Fire, SunOS, +Ultra and VirtualBox are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in +the United States and other countries.

+ +

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their +products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and +the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed +by the “™” or the “®” symbol.

+ +

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Supported Processors and System Boards

2.1 amd64
2.2 i386
2.3 ia64
2.4 pc98
2.5 powerpc
2.6 sparc64

3 Supported Devices

3.1 Disk Controllers
3.2 Ethernet Interfaces
3.3 FDDI Interfaces
3.4 ATM Interfaces
3.5 Wireless Network Interfaces
3.6 Miscellaneous Networks
3.7 Serial Interfaces
3.8 Sound Devices
3.9 Camera and Video Capture Devices
3.10 USB Devices
3.11 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices
3.12 Bluetooth Devices
3.13 Cryptographic Accelerators
3.14 Miscellaneous

+ +

1 Introduction

+ +

This document contains the hardware compatibility notes for FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. It +lists the hardware platforms supported by FreeBSD, as well as the various types of +hardware devices (storage controllers, network interfaces, and so on), along with known +working instances of these devices.

+ +

2 Supported Processors and System +Boards

+ +

This section provides some architecture-specific information about the specific +processors and systems that are supported by each architecture.

+ +

2.1 amd64

+ +

Since mid-2003 FreeBSD/amd64 has supported the AMD64 (“Hammer”) and +Intel® EM64T architecture, and is now one of the +Tier-1 platforms (fully supported architecture), which are expected to be Production +Quality with respects to all aspects of the FreeBSD operating system, including +installation and development environments.

+ +

Note that there are two names for this architecture, AMD64 (AMD) and Intel EM64T +(Extended Memory 64-bit Technology). 64-bit mode of the two architectures are almost +compatible with each other, and FreeBSD/amd64 should support them both.

+ +

As of this writing, the following processors are supported:

+ +

+
AMD Athlon™64 +(“Clawhammer”).
+
+
AMD Opteron™ +(“Sledgehammer”).
+
+
All multi-core Intel Xeon™ processors except Sossaman have EM64T +support.
+
+
The single-core Intel Xeon processors “Nocona”, “Irwindale”, + “Potomac”, and “Cranford” have EM64T support.
+
+
All Intel Core 2 (not Core Duo) and later +processors
+
+
All Intel Pentium® D +processors
+
+
Intel Pentium 4s and +Celeron Ds using the “Cedar Mill” core have EM64T support.
+
+
Some Intel Pentium 4s +and Celeron Ds using the “Prescott” core have EM64T support. See +the Intel Processor Spec +Finder for the definitive answer about EM64T support in Intel processors.
+

+ +

Intel EM64T is an extended version of IA-32 (x86) and + different from Intel IA-64 (Itanium) architecture, +which FreeBSD/ia64 supports. Some Intel's old +documentation refers to Intel EM64T as “64-bit +extension technology” or “IA-32e”.

+ +

The largest tested memory configuration to date is 64GB. SMP support has been +recently completed and is reasonably robust.

+ +

In many respects, FreeBSD/amd64 is similar to FreeBSD/i386, in terms of drivers +supported. There may be some issues with 64-bit cleanliness in some (particularly + older) drivers. Generally, drivers that already function correctly on other +64-bit platforms should work.

+ +

FreeBSD/amd64 is a very young platform on FreeBSD. While the core FreeBSD kernel +and base system components are generally fairly robust, there are likely to still be +rough edges, particularly with third party packages.

+ +

2.2 i386

+ +

FreeBSD/i386 runs on a wide variety of “IBM PC compatible” machines. +Due to the wide range of hardware available for this architecture, it is impossible + to exhaustively list all combinations of equipment supported by FreeBSD. +Nevertheless, some general guidelines are presented here.

+ +

Almost all i386™-compatible processors with a +floating point unit are supported. All Intel +processors beginning with the 80486 are supported, including the 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and variants thereof, such as the Xeon and Celeron® processors. + All i386-compatible AMD processors are also +supported, including the Am486®, Am5x86®, K5, AMD-K6® (and +variants), AMD Athlon (including Athlon-MP, +Athlon-XP, Athlon-4, and Athlon Thunderbird), and AMD Duron™ processors. The AMD Élan SC520 +embedded processor is supported. The Transmeta Crusoe is recognized and supported, +as are i386-compatible processors from Cyrix and +NexGen.

+ +

There is a wide variety of motherboards available for this architecture. +Motherboards using the ISA, VLB, EISA, AGP, and PCI expansion busses are +well-supported. There is some limited support for the MCA +(“MicroChannel”) expansion bus used in the IBM PS/2 line of PCs.

+ +

Symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems are generally supported by FreeBSD, +although in some cases, BIOS or motherboard bugs may generate some problems. Perusal +of the archives of the FreeBSD +symmetric multiprocessing mailing list may yield some clues.

+ +

FreeBSD will take advantage of HyperThreading (HTT) support on Intel CPUs that support this feature. A kernel with the options SMP feature enabled will automatically detect the +additional logical processors. The default FreeBSD scheduler treats the logical +processors the same as additional physical processors; in other words, no attempt + is made to optimize scheduling decisions given the shared resources between +logical processors within the same CPU. Because this naive scheduling can result in +suboptimal performance, under certain circumstances it may be useful to disable +the logical processors with the machdep.hyperthreading_allowed tunable. The +smp(4) manual +page has more details.

+ +

FreeBSD will take advantage of Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support on CPUs +that support this feature. A kernel with the PAE feature +enabled will detect memory above 4 gigabytes and allow it to be used by the + system. This feature places constraints on the device drivers and other +features of FreeBSD which may be used; consult the +pae(4) manpage +for more details.

+ +

FreeBSD will generally run on i386-based laptops, albeit with varying levels of +support for certain hardware features such as sound, graphics, power management, and +PCCARD expansion slots. These features tend to vary in idiosyncratic ways + between machines, and frequently require special-case support in FreeBSD to +work around hardware bugs or other oddities. When in doubt, a search of the archives +of the FreeBSD laptop computer mailing list may be useful.

+ +

Most modern laptops (as well as many desktops) use the Advanced Configuration and +Power Management (ACPI) standard. FreeBSD supports ACPI via the ACPI Component +Architecture reference implementation from Intel, as +described in the +acpi(4) manual +page. The use of ACPI causes instabilities on some machines and it may be necessary +to disable the ACPI driver, which is normally loaded via a kernel module. This +may be accomplished by adding the following line to /boot/device.hints:

+ +

+hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"
+

+ +

Users debugging ACPI-related problems may find it useful to disable portions of +the ACPI functionality. The +acpi(4) manual +page has more information on how to do this via loader tunables.

+ +

ACPI depends on a Differentiated System Descriptor Table (DSDT) provided by each +machine's BIOS. Some machines have bad or incomplete DSDTs, which prevents ACPI from +functioning correctly. Replacement DSDTs for some machines can be found at the +DSDT section +of the ACPI4Linux project + Web site. FreeBSD can use these DSDTs to override the DSDT provided by the +BIOS; see the +acpi(4) manual +page for more information.

+ +

2.3 ia64

+ +

Currently supported processors are the Itanium® and the Itanium 2.

+ +

Supported chipsets include:

+ +

+
HP zx1
+
+
Intel 460GX
+
+
Intel E8870
+

+ +

Both Uniprocessor (UP) and Symmetric Multi-processor (SMP) configurations are +supported.

+ +

Most devices that can be found in or are compatible with ia64 machines are fully +supported. The notable exception is the VGA console. The FreeBSD support for VGA + consoles is at this time too much based on PC hardware and not all ia64 +machines have chipsets that provide sufficient PC legacy support. As such +syscons(4) can +not be enabled and the use of a serial console is required.

+ +

2.4 pc98

+ +

NEC PC-9801/9821 series with almost all i386-compatible + processors, including 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and +variants. All i386-compatible processors by AMD, +Cyrix, IBM, and IDT are also supported.

+ +

NEC FC-9801/9821 series, and NEC SV-98 series (both of them are compatible with +PC-9801/9821 series) should be supported.

+ +

EPSON PC-386/486/586 series, which are compatible with NEC PC-9801 series are +supported.

+ +

High-resolution mode is not supported. NEC PC-98XA/XL/RL/XL^2, and NEC PC-H98 +series are supported in normal (PC-9801 compatible) mode only.

+ +

Although there are some multi-processor systems (such as Rs20/B20), SMP-related +features of FreeBSD are not supported yet.

+ +

PC-9801/9821 standard bus (called C-Bus), PC-9801NOTE expansion bus (110pin), and +PCI bus are supported. New Extend Standard Architecture (NESA) bus (used in PC-H98, +SV-H98, and FC-H98 series) is not supported.

+ +

2.5 powerpc

+ +

This section describes the systems currently known to be supported by FreeBSD on +the PowerPC platform. This list is not exhaustive.

+ +

In general, all New World architecture Apple hardware is supported, as well a +limited selection of non-Apple machines.

+ +

All systems listed below are fully supported, with the exception that software +fan control is currently missing on some Power Macintosh G5 models. SMP is supported +on all systems with more than 1 processor.

+ +

+
Apple iMac G3
+
+
Apple iMac G4
+
+
Apple iMac G5
+
+
Apple Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
+
+
Apple Power Macintosh G4
+
+
Apple Power Macintosh G5
+
+
Apple iBook G3
+
+
Apple iBook G4
+
+
Apple PowerBook G3 (Lombard and Pismo)
+
+
Apple PowerBook G4
+
+
Apple XServe G4
+
+
Apple XServe G5
+
+
Apple Mac Mini
+
+
Embedded boards based on MPC85XX
+

+ +

2.6 sparc64

+ +

This section describes the systems currently known to be supported by FreeBSD on +the Fujitsu SPARC64® and Sun UltraSPARC® platforms. For background information +on the various hardware designs see the Sun System +Handbook.

+ +

SMP is supported on all systems with more than 1 processor.

+ +

When using the GENERIC kernel, FreeBSD/sparc64 systems +not equipped with a framebuffer supported by the +creator(4) (Sun +Creator, Sun Creator3D and Sun Elite3D) or +machfb(4) (Sun +PGX and Sun PGX64 as well as the ATI Mach64 chips found onboard in for example + Sun Blade™ 100, Sun Blade 150, Sun Ultra™ 5 and Sun Ultra 10) driver must use the serial console.

+ +

If you have a system that is not listed here, it may not have been tested with +FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. We encourage you to try it and send a note to the FreeBSD +SPARC porting mailing list with your results, including which devices work and +which do not.

+ +

The following systems are fully supported by FreeBSD:

+ +

+
Naturetech GENIALstation 777S
+
+
Sun Blade 100
+
+
Sun Blade 150
+
+
Sun Enterprise™ 150
+
+
Sun Enterprise 220R
+
+
Sun Enterprise 250
+
+
Sun Enterprise 420R
+
+
Sun Enterprise 450
+
+
Sun Fire™ B100s (support for the on-board +NICs first appeared in 8.1-RELEASE)
+
+
Sun Fire V100
+
+
Sun Fire V120
+
+
Sun Netra™ t1 100/105
+
+
Sun Netra T1 AC200/DC200
+
+
Sun Netra t 1100
+
+
Sun Netra t 1120
+
+
Sun Netra t 1125
+
+
Sun Netra t 1400/1405
+
+
Sun Netra 120
+
+
Sun Netra X1
+
+
Sun SPARCengine® Ultra AX1105
+
+
Sun SPARCengine Ultra AXe
+
+
Sun SPARCengine Ultra AXi
+
+
Sun SPARCengine Ultra AXmp
+
+
Sun SPARCengine CP1500
+
+
Sun Ultra 1
+
+
Sun Ultra 1E
+
+
Sun Ultra 2
+
+
Sun Ultra 5
+
+
Sun Ultra 10
+
+
Sun Ultra 30
+
+
Sun Ultra 60
+
+
Sun Ultra 80
+
+
Sun Ultra 450
+

+ +

The following systems are partially supported by FreeBSD. In particular the fibre +channel controllers in SBus-based systems are not supported. However, it is possible +to use these with a SCSI controller supported by the +esp(4) driver +(Sun ESP SCSI, Sun FAS Fast-SCSI and Sun FAS366 Fast-Wide SCSI controllers).

+ +

+
Sun Enterprise 3500
+
+
Sun Enterprise 4500
+

+ +

Starting with 7.2-RELEASE, sparc64 systems based on Sun UltraSPARC III and beyond are also supported by FreeBSD, which +includes the following known working systems:

+ +

+
Sun Blade 1000
+
+
Sun Blade 1500
+
+
Sun Blade 2000
+
+
Sun Blade 2500
+
+
Sun Fire 280R
+
+
Sun Fire V210
+
+
Sun Fire V215 (support first appeared in +7.3-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE)
+
+
Sun Fire V240
+
+
Sun Fire V245 (support first appeared in +7.3-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE)
+
+
Sun Fire V250
+
+
Sun Fire V440 (support for the on-board NICs first + appeared in 7.3-RELEASE and 8.0-RELEASE)
+
+
Sun Fire V480 (501-6780 and 501-6790 centerplanes +only, for which support first appeared in 7.3-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE, other +centerplanes might work beginning with 8.3-RELEASE and 9.0-RELEASE)
+
+
Sun Fire V880
+
+
Sun Fire V890 (support first appeared in +7.4-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE, non-mixed UltraSPARC +IV/IV+ CPU-configurations only)
+
+
Netra 20/Netra T4
+

+ +

The following Sun UltraSPARC systems are not tested but + believed to be also supported by FreeBSD:

+ +

+
Sun Fire V125
+
+
Sun Fire V490 (support first appeared in +7.4-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE, non-mixed UltraSPARC +IV/IV+ CPU-configurations only)
+

+ +

Starting with 7.4-RELEASE and 8.1-RELEASE, sparc64 systems based on Fujitsu SPARC64 V are also supported by FreeBSD, which includes the +following known working systems:

+ +

+
Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER® 250
+

+ +

The following Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER systems are not tested +but believed to be also supported by FreeBSD:

+ +

+
Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 450
+
+
Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 650
+
+
Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 850
+

+ +

3 Supported Devices

+ +

This section describes the devices currently known to be supported by FreeBSD. Other +configurations may also work, but simply have not been tested yet. Feedback, updates, and +corrections to this list are encouraged.

+ +

Where possible, the drivers applicable to each device or class of devices is listed. +If the driver in question has a manual page in the FreeBSD base distribution (most +should), it is referenced here. Information on specific models of supported devices, +controllers, etc. can be found in the manual pages.

+ +

+
Note: The device lists in this document are being generated automatically +from FreeBSD manual pages. This means that some devices, which are supported by +multiple drivers, may appear multiple times.
+

+ +

3.1 Disk Controllers

+ +

[amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, sparc64] IDE/ATA controllers ( +ata(4) + driver)

+ +

[pc98] IDE/ATA controllers (wdc driver)

+ +

+
On-board IDE controller
+

+ +

[i386,ia64,amd64] Controllers supported by the +aac(4) driver +include:

+ +

+
Adaptec AAC-364
+
+
Adaptec RAID 2045
+
+
Adaptec RAID 2405
+
+
Adaptec RAID 2445
+
+
Adaptec RAID 2805
+
+
Adaptec RAID 3085
+
+
Adaptec RAID 31205
+
+
Adaptec RAID 31605
+
+
Adaptec RAID 5085
+
+
Adaptec RAID 51205
+
+
Adaptec RAID 51245
+
+
Adaptec RAID 51605
+
+
Adaptec RAID 51645
+
+
Adaptec RAID 52445
+
+
Adaptec RAID 5405
+
+
Adaptec RAID 5445
+
+
Adaptec RAID 5805
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 3405
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 3805
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 4000SAS
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 4005SAS
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 4800SAS
+
+
Adaptec SAS RAID 4805SAS
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2020SA ZCR
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2025SA ZCR
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2026ZCR
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2410SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2420SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2610SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2620SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2810SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 2820SA
+
+
Adaptec SATA RAID 21610SA
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2020ZCR
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2025ZCR
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2120S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2130S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2130SLP
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2230SLP
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2200S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2240S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 3230S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 3240S
+
+
Adaptec SCSI RAID 5400S
+
+
Dell CERC SATA RAID 2
*** DIFF OUTPUT TRUNCATED AT 1000 LINES ***