--- title: "FreeBSD/amd64 5.4-RELEASE Hardware Notes" sidenav: download --- ++++

The FreeBSD Documentation Project


Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Supported Processors and Motherboards
3 Supported Devices
3.1 Disk Controllers
3.2 Ethernet Interfaces
3.3 Token Ring Interfaces
3.4 FDDI Interfaces
3.5 ATM Interfaces
3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces
3.7 Miscellaneous Networks
3.8 ISDN Interfaces
3.9 Serial Interfaces
3.10 Audio Devices
3.11 Camera and Video Capture Devices
3.12 USB Devices
3.13 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices
3.14 Bluetooth Devices
3.15 Cryptographic Accelerators
3.16 Miscellaneous

1 Introduction

This document contains the hardware compatibility notes for FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE on the AMD64 hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/amd64 5.4-RELEASE). It lists devices known to work on this platform, as well as some notes on boot-time kernel customization that may be useful when attempting to configure support for new devices.

Note: This document includes information specific to the AMD64 hardware platform. Versions of the hardware compatibility notes for other architectures will differ in some details.


2 Supported Processors and Motherboards

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 the both.

As of this writing, the following processors are supported:

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 8GB. 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.


3 Supported Devices

$FreeBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware/common/dev.sgml,v 1.227.2.26.2.2 2005/04/14 08:41:33 brueffer Exp $

This section describes the devices currently known to be supported by with FreeBSD on the AMD64 platform. 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

IDE/ATA controllers ( ata(4) driver)

The adapters supported by the aic(4) driver include:

The ahc(4) driver supports the following SCSI host adapter chips and SCSI controller cards:

The ahd(4) driver supports the following:

Controllers supported by the aac(4) driver include:

The adv(4) driver supports the following SCSI controllers:

The adw(4) driver supports SCSI controllers including:

The bt(4) driver supports the following BusLogic MultiMaster ``W'', ``C'', ``S'', and ``A'' series and compatible SCSI host adapters:

AMI FastDisk Host Adapters that are true BusLogic MultiMaster clones are also supported by the bt(4) driver.

The dpt(4) driver provides support for the following RAID adapters:

Controllers supported by the amr(4) driver include:

Note: Booting from these controllers is supported. EISA adapters are not supported.

The arcmsr(4) driver supports the following cards:

Controllers supported by the mlx(4) driver include:

All major firmware revisions (2.x, 3.x, 4.x and 5.x) are supported, however it is always advisable to upgrade to the most recent firmware available for the controller. Compatible Mylex controllers not listed should work, but have not been verified.

Note: Booting from these controllers is supported. EISA adapters are not supported.

Controllers supported by the mly(4) driver include:

Compatible Mylex controllers not listed should work, but have not been verified.

The twe(4) driver supports the following PATA/SATA RAID controllers:

The twa(4) driver supports the following SATA RAID controllers:

The ncr(4) driver provides support for the following NCR/Symbios SCSI controller chips:

The following add-on boards are known to be supported:

The sym(4) driver provides support for the following Symbios/LSI Logic PCI SCSI controllers:

The SCSI controllers supported by sym(4) can be either embedded on a motherboard, or on one of the following add-on boards:

Cards supported by the isp(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the amd(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the ciss(4) driver include:

Controllers supported by the iir(4) driver include:

The SRCU31 and SRCU31L can be updated via a firmware update available from Intel.

Controllers supported by the ips(4) driver include:

The following controllers are supported by the mpt(4) driver:

The SCSI controller chips supported by the mpt(4) driver can be found onboard on many systems including:

SCSI controllers supported by the trm(4) driver include:

For the Tekram DC-310/U and DC-390F/U/UW/U2B/U2W/U3W PCI SCSI host adapters, use the sym(4) driver.

With all supported SCSI controllers, full support is provided for SCSI-I, SCSI-II, and SCSI-III peripherals, including hard disks, optical disks, tape drives (including DAT, 8mm Exabyte, Mammoth, and DLT), medium changers, processor target devices and CD-ROM drives. WORM devices that support CD-ROM commands are supported for read-only access by the CD-ROM drivers (such as cd(4)). WORM/CD-R/CD-RW writing support is provided by cdrecord(1), which is a part of the sysutils/cdrtools port in the Ports Collection.

The following CD-ROM type systems are supported at this time:




3.2 Ethernet Interfaces

Adapters supported by the sf(4) driver include:

The ti(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon Tigon I and II chips. The ti(4) driver has been tested with the following adapters:

The following adapters should also be supported but have not yet been tested:

The pcn(4) driver supports adapters and embedded controllers based on the AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+, PCnet/FAST III, PCnet/PRO and PCnet/Home Fast Ethernet chips:

SMC 83c17x (EPIC)-based Ethernet NICs (tx(4) driver)

Adapters supported by the rl(4) driver include:

The wb(4) driver supports Winbond W89C840F based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:

The vr(4) driver supports VIA Technologies Rhine I, Rhine II, and Rhine III based Fast Ethernet adapters including:

The sis(4) driver supports Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900 and SiS 7016 based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers, as well as Fast Ethernet adapters based on the National Semiconductor DP83815 (MacPhyter) chip. Supported adapters include:

The nge(4) driver supports National Semiconductor DP83820 and DP83821 based Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

The ste(4) driver supports Sundance Technologies ST201 based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:

Adapters supported by the sk(4) driver include:

The tl(4) driver supports Texas Instruments ThunderLAN based Ethernet and Fast Ethernet adapters including a large number of Compaq PCI Ethernet adapters. Also supported are:

The tl(4) driver also supports the built-in Ethernet adapters of various Compaq Prosignia servers and Compaq Deskpro desktop machines including:

The dc(4) driver provides support for the following chipsets:

The following NICs are known to work with the dc(4) driver at this time:

Adapters supported by the aue(4) driver include:

The cue(4) driver supports CATC USB-EL1210A based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The kue(4) driver supports Kawasaki LSI KL5KLUSB101B based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The axe(4) driver supports ASIX Electronics AX88172 based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The rue(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8150 based USB Ethernet adapters including:

The udav(4) driver supports the following adapters:

Adapters supported by the de(4) driver include:

Controllers and cards supported by the fe(4) driver include:

Adapters supported by the fxp(4) driver include:

The ex(4) driver supports the following Ethernet adapters:

The ep(4) driver supports Ethernet adapters based on the 3Com 3C5x9 Etherlink III Parallel Tasking chipset, including:

The xl(4) driver supports the following hardware:

Both the 3C656 family of CardBus cards and the 3C556 family of MiniPCI cards have a built-in proprietary modem. Neither the xl(4) driver nor any other driver supports this modem.

The vx(4) driver supports the following cards:

Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0-based NICs (cs(4) driver)

The sn(4) driver supports SMC9xxx based ISA and PCMCIA cards including:

The xe(4) driver supports the following cards:

Other similar devices using the same hardware may also be supported.

Adapters supported by the lge(4) driver include:

The txp(4) driver supports the following cards:

The bge(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom BCM570x family of Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including the following:

The em(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Intel 82540, 82541ER, 82541PI, 82542, 82543, 82544, 82545, 82546, 82546EB, 82546GB and 82547 controller chips:

The gx(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Intel 82542 and 82543 controller chips:

The hme(4) driver supports the on-board Ethernet interfaces of many Sun UltraSPARC workstation and server models. Cards supported by the hme(4) driver include:

Broadcom BCM4401 based Fast Ethernet adapters ( bfe(4) driver)

The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and RTL8110S based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

The ixgb(4) driver supports the following cards:

The vge(4) driver supports VIA Networking VT3119 and VT6122 based Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:


3.3 Token Ring Interfaces


3.4 FDDI Interfaces


3.5 ATM Interfaces


3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces

Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11b wireless network adapters and workalikes using the Lucent Hermes, Intersil PRISM-II, Intersil PRISM-2.5, Intersil Prism-3, and Symbol Spectrum24 chipsets (wi(4) driver)

Cisco/Aironet 802.11b wireless adapters (an(4) driver)

Cards supported by the awi(4) driver include:

The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver.

Cards supported by the cnw(4) driver include:


3.7 Miscellaneous Networks


3.8 ISDN Interfaces


3.9 Serial Interfaces

``PC standard'' 8250, 16450, and 16550-based serial ports ( sio(4) driver)

AST 4 port serial card using shared IRQ

PCI-Based multi-port serial boards ( puc(4) driver)



Specialix SI/XIO/SX multiport serial cards, with both the older SIHOST2.x and the new ``enhanced'' (transputer based, aka JET) host cards (ISA, EISA and PCI are supported) (si(4) driver)


3.10 Audio Devices

The snd_ad1816(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_cs4281(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_solo(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

Note that older ESS ISA cards with ES18xx chipset are supported via snd_ess(4) and/or snd_sbc(4).

The snd_sbc(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_cmi(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_csa(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

Some onboard CS4610 chips are accompanied by the CS423x ISA codec instead of the CS4297 AC97 codec. Such configurations are not supported by the snd_csa(4) driver yet.

The snd_es137x(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_ess(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_maestro(4) driver supports the following PCI sound cards:

The snd_maestro3(4) driver supports the following audio devices:

The snd_fm801(4) driver supports audio devices based on the following chipset:

The snd_gusc(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

Intel 443MX, 810, 815, and 815E integrated sound devices ( pcm(4) driver)

MSS/WSS Compatible DSPs ( pcm(4) driver)

The snd_neomagic(4) driver supports the following audio devices:

OPTi 931/82C931 ( pcm(4) driver)

The snd_vibes(4) driver supports audio devices based on the following chipset:

The snd_emu10k1(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

Trident 4DWave DX/NX ( pcm(4) driver)

The snd_via82c686(4) driver supports audio devices based on the following chipset:

The snd_ds1(4) driver supports the following soundcards:

The snd_ich(4) driver supports the following audio devices:


3.11 Camera and Video Capture Devices


3.12 USB Devices

A range of USB peripherals are supported; devices known to work are listed in this section. Owing to the generic nature of most USB devices, with some exceptions any device of a given class will be supported, even if not explicitly listed here.

Note: USB Ethernet adapters can be found in the section listing Ethernet interfaces.

Note: USB Bluetooth adapters can be found in Bluetooth section.

The ohci(4) driver supports all OHCI v1.0 compliant controllers including:

The uhci(4) driver supports all UHCI v1.1 compliant controllers including:

USB 2.0 controllers using the EHCI interface ( ehci(4) driver)

Hubs

Keyboards ( ukbd(4) driver)

Miscellaneous



The following devices are supported by the urio(4) driver:

Devices supported by the umodem(4) driver include:

Mice ( ums(4) driver)

The ulpt(4) driver provides support for USB printers and parallel printer conversion cables, including the following:

The ubsa(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The ubser(4) driver provides support for the BWCT console management serial adapters.

The uftdi(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The uplcom(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The umct(4) driver supports the following adapters:

The following devices are supported by the uscanner(4) driver:

The umass(4) driver supports USB Mass Storage devices, including:

Among the supported digital cameras are:

Audio Devices ( uaudio(4) driver)

The uvisor(4) driver supports the following devices:


3.13 IEEE 1394 (Firewire) Devices

The fwohci(4) driver provides support for PCI/CardBus FireWire interface cards. The driver supports the following IEEE 1394 OHCI chipsets:

Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2) storage devices ( sbp(4) driver)


3.14 Bluetooth Devices

The ng_bt3c(4) driver provides support for the 3Com/HP 3CRWB6096-A PCCARD bluetooth adapter.

The ng_ubt(4) driver supports all Bluetooth USB devices that conform with the Bluetooth specification v1.1, including:


3.15 Cryptographic Accelerators

The hifn(4) driver supports various cards containing the Hifn 7751, 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets, such as:

The safe(4) driver supports cards containing any of the following chips:

The ubsec(4) driver supports cards containing any of the following chips:


3.16 Miscellaneous

FAX-Modem/PCCARD



Floppy drives ( fdc(4) driver)

VGA-compatible video cards ( vga(4) driver)

Note: Information regarding specific video cards and compatibility with Xorg can be found at http://www.x.org/.



Keyboards including:



Pointing devices including:

Note: moused(8) has more information on using pointing devices with FreeBSD. Information on using pointing devices with Xorg can be found at http://www.x.org/.



``PC standard'' parallel ports ( ppc(4) driver)

PC-compatible joysticks ( joy(4) driver)


This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.

For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.

++++