[OpenBSD]

OpenBSD/amd64


OpenBSD/amd64 runs on AMD's Athlon-64 family of processors in 64-bit mode.

It also runs on the upcoming Intel ia32e processors which contain cloned support for the AMD64 extensions, but since Intel left out support for the page table NXE bit (No-EXecute) there is no W^X support on the Intel cpus.

Note that OpenBSD/i386 also runs on these processors, but in 32-bit mode.

Table of contents


Current status:

It can be expected to install and run with minimal difficulty on most current hardware.

The only major shortcoming at this time is that the kernel debugger ddb is somewhat poor.


Supported hardware:

Processors

All versions of the AMD Athlon 64 processors and their clones are supported.

SMP support

Starting with OpenBSD 3.6, OpenBSD/amd64 supports most SMP (Symmetrical MultiProcessor) systems. To support SMP operation, a separate SMP kernel (bsd.mp) is included with the installation file sets.

As this is a new feature, developers will want to see what hardware does and doesn't work when running SMP, so it is even more important to send a dmesg after install.

Buses

Bus interfaces

Entropy sources

PCI IDE and Serial ATA Controllers (pciide)

RAID mode for the controllers which have RAID-capable BIOS is not supported.

SCSI Host Adapters

RAID and Cache Controllers

CD-ROM and DVD-ROM Drives

Tape Drives

Display Adapters

Note that not all of the display adapters OpenBSD/amd64 supports can be used under XFree86 (please refer the XFree86 documentation for more information).

Serial Ports

Communications Controllers

Ethernet Adapters

Please be aware that many NE2000 adapters fail or perform very poorly. We do not recommend using them, but your mileage may vary.

Wireless Ethernet Adapters

Gigabit Ethernet Adapters

ATM Adapters

FDDI Adapters

WAN Adapters

Cryptography Accelerators

Universal Serial Bus (USB) Devices

Pointing Devices

Sound Devices

The following driver has not been extensively tested:

Radio Receiver Devices (radio)

Miscellaneous Devices

* Support added after 3.6.


Getting and installing OpenBSD/amd64:

The latest supported OpenBSD/amd64 release is OpenBSD 3.6. Here are the OpenBSD/amd64 3.6 installation instructions .

Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/amd64 snapshot installation instructions as well.

There are several installation media provided:


Supported platforms
www@openbsd.org
$OpenBSD: amd64.html,v 1.41 2004/10/30 02:59:40 jsg Exp $