--- title: "FreeBSD/amd64 6.3-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 Sound 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 6.3-RELEASE on the AMD64 hardware platform (also referred to as FreeBSD/amd64 6.3-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 them 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 1.282.2.17 2007/09/13 16:25:43 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)

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

The ahd(4) driver supports the following:

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

Controllers supported by the amd(4) driver include:

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:

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.

Controllers supported by the ciss(4) driver include:

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

The hptmv(4) driver supports the following ATA RAID controllers:

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:

Cards supported by the isp(4) driver include:

The mfi(4) driver supports the following hardware:

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

The Ultra 320 SCSI controller chips supported by the mpt(4) driver can be found onboard on many systems including:

These systems also contain Integrated Raid Mirroring and Integrated Raid Mirroring Enhanced which this driver also supports. The SAS controller chips are also present on many new AMD/Opteron based systems, like the Sun 4100. Note that this controller can drive both SAS and SATA drives or a mix of them at the same time. The Integrated Raid Mirroring available for these controllers is poorly supported at best. The Fibre Channel controller chipset are supported by a broad variety of speeds and systems. The Apple Fibre Channel HBA is in fact the FC949ES card. This driver also supports target mode for Fibre Channel cards. This support may be enabled by setting the desired role of the core via the LSI Logic firmware utility that establishes what roles the card can take on - no separate compilation is required.

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 rr232x(4) driver supports the following hardware:

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:

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.

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

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

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 aue(4) driver include:

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

The bce(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom NetXtreme II family of Gigabit Ethernet controllers, including the following:

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

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

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

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

The cxgb(4) driver supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the T3 and T3B chipset:

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 de(4) driver include:

The em(4) driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Intel 82540, 82541ER, 82541PI, 82542, 82543, 82544, 82545, 82546, 82546EB, 82546GB, 82547, 82571, 82572 and 82573 controller chips:

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

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

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

Adapters supported by the fxp(4) driver include:

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:

The ixgb(4) driver supports the following cards:

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

Adapters supported by the lge(4) driver include:

The msk(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Marvell/SysKonnect Yukon II based Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including:

The mxge(4) driver supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Myricom LANai Z8E chips:

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

The nve(4) driver supports the NVIDIA MCP onboard adapters of mainboards with the following chipsets:

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:

The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, and RTL8101E based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:

Adapters supported by the rl(4) driver include:

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

Adapters supported by the sf(4) driver include:

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) and DP83816 chips. Supported adapters include:

Adapters supported by the sk(4) driver include:

The sn(4) driver supports SMC91Cxx based ISA and PCMCIA cards including:

The sn(4) driver supports the SMC 91C90, SMC 91C92, SMC 91C94, SMC 91C95, SMC 91C96, SMC91C100 and SMC 91C100FD chips from SMC. The Farallon EtherWave and EtherMac card came in two varieties. The ep(4) driver supports the 595 and 895 cards. These cards have the blue arrow on the front along with a 3Com logo. The Farallon 595a cards, which have a red arrow on the front, are also called EtherWave and EtherMac. They are supported by the sn(4) driver.

The stge(4) driver provides support for various NICs based on the Sundance/Tamarack TC9021 based Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including:

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

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 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:

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

The txp(4) driver supports the following cards:

The udav(4) driver supports the following adapters:

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

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

The vx(4) driver supports the following cards:

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

The xe(4) driver supports the following cards:

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

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.


3.3 Token Ring Interfaces


3.4 FDDI Interfaces


3.5 ATM Interfaces


3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces

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

The ath(4) driver supports all Atheros Cardbus or PCI cards, except those that are based on the AR5005VL chipset. A list of cards that are supported can be found at http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts/default.asp.

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:

[i386, amd64] Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI network adapter ( ipw(4) driver)

[i386, amd64] Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG MiniPCI and 2225BG PCI network adapters ( iwi(4) driver)

The ral(4) driver supports PCI/CardBus wireless adapters based on the Ralink Technology RT2500, RT2501, and RT2600 chipsets, including:

An up to date list can be found at http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ral/list.html.

The ural(4) driver supports USB 2.0 wireless adapters based on the Ralink Technology RT2500USB chipset, including:

An up to date list can be found at http://ralink.rapla.net/.

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)


3.7 Miscellaneous Networks


3.8 ISDN Interfaces


3.9 Serial Interfaces

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

The uart(4) driver supports the following classes of UARTs:

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 “enhanced” (transputer based, aka JET) host cards (ISA, EISA and PCI) are supported. Note that the newer SX+ PCI cards are not currently supported. (si(4) driver)


3.10 Sound Devices

The snd_ad1816(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_atiixp(4) driver supports the following audio chipsets:

The snd_cmi(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_cs4281(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_csa(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

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_ds1(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_emu10k1(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_es137x(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_ess(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

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

The snd_gusc(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

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

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

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

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

The snd_sbc(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

The snd_solo(4) driver supports the following sound cards:

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

The snd_t4dwave(4) driver supports the following audio devices:

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

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


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 supported 3G cards provide the necessary modem port for ppp, pppd, or mpd connections; other functions of these cards (diagnostic port, SIM toolkit port, WLAN) are not supported.

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:

Because there is no standard device class for USB scanners, this driver will only recognise devices whose USB IDs are explicitly listed in the table in the driver itself. The following devices are supported to date:

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>.

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