64-bit ARM FreeBSD Support Is Taking Shape

While Linux/Android on AArch64 is what's usually talked about, FreeBSD developers continue making progress on porting their kernel to 64-bit ARM.

For months FreeBSD developers have been eying 64-bit ARM and the kernel code is taking shape. In a status update posted on Monday, FreeBSD/ARM64 is now booting up into single-user mode on ARM's reference simulator. Work is still underway on porting the remaining kernel drivers and getting the 64-bit ARM userland support in shape.

The goal is to ultimately have FreeBSD on ARM64 be a tier-one architecture with release media and prebuilt package sets coming in the future. The reference hardware platform being initially targeted for FreeBSD on 64-bit ARM is the Cavium ThunderX platform.

The Cavium ThunderX should be an ARMv8 performance beauty that's aimed for data centers and cloud deployments with up to 48 cores at 2.5GHz, boast their own interconnection technology for multiple sockets, and support DDR3/DDR4 memory.