FreeBSD on Allwinner (sunxi) systems

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FreeBSD on Allwinner (sunxi) systems

Support policies

Support for all the below is done on a volunteer basis. New devices are added all the time. However, from time to time certain older devices will be dropped unless new developers volunteer to maintain them.

Supported SoCs

FreeBSD supports the following Allwinner SoCs:

Name	Type	Cores	Width	Family	FreeBSD	Comments	Example Boards
Allwinner A10	sun4i	1	32	Cortex-A8	armv7	supported	Cubieboard
Allwinner A13/R8	sun5i	1	32	Cortex-A8	armv7	supported	OLinuXino
Allwinner A20	sun7i	2	32	Cortex-A7	armv7	supported	Banana Pi
Allwinner A31 & A31s	sun6i	4	32	Cortex-A7	armv7	supported	Banana Pi M2
Allwinner A64	sun50i	4	64	Cortex-A53	aarch64	supported	Pine64
Allwinner A83T	sun8i	8	32	Cortex-A7	armv7	supported	Banana Pi M3
Allwinner H3 & H2+	sun8i	4	32	Cortex-A7	armv7	supported	Orange Pi One
Allwinner H5	sun50i	4	64	Cortex-A53	aarch64	supported	NanoPI K1 Plus
Allwinner H6	sun50i	4	64	Cortex-A53	aarch64	supported	Pine H64

Supported boards

These SoCs are found in a large number of development boards and other devices. FreeBSD has support for some of these boards, including (but not limited to) the following:

A10 Supported Boards

Note: A10 support is now in an "only as needed" basis as of 20180620. It is reasonably similar to the more-popular A20, however.

A13 Supported Boards

Note: A13 support is now in an "only as needed" basis as of 20180620. It is reasonably similar to the more-popular A20, however.

A13-OLinuXino

A20 Supported Boards

Note: KyleEvans has agreed to take over A20 support, thus it is no longer being considered for deprecation as of 20180620.

Banana Pi
CubieBoard 2
Lamobo R1 (support in very early stages as of 20180816)
Olimex A20 SOM
PCDuino3

A31/A31S Supported Boards

Note: A31 support is being considered for deprecation as of 20180612.

A64 Supported Boards

Vendor sites

A83T Supported Boards

BananaPi M3

H3 Supported Boards

H5 Supported Boards

Boards known to boot FreeBSD:

H6 Supported Boards

Supported devices

Legend

Supported

Should work

Work in progress

Untested

Not working

Not supported

Not applicable


	A10	A13	A20	A31	A31S	A64	A83T	H3	H5	H6
Audio (analog)		YES	YES					YES
Audio (HDMI)			YES
cpufreq / DVFS	YES		YES			YES	YES	YES	YES
crypto										YES
DMA		YES	YES					YES
Ethernet	r262710		YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES	YES
Framebuffer			YES			efifb			efifb
GPIO	r246342	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES
HDMI video			YES
I2C	r295626	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES		YES
IR (RX)			YES					YES	YES
SATA	285090		YES
SD/MMC	r283253	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES	YES
Thermal	YES	YES	YES			YES	YES	YES	YES
UART	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES	YES
USB Host	r246057	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES
USB DRD			YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Watchdog	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	r305134	YES	YES	YES
SPI	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES

What still needs to be done

The following SoC interfaces are not yet supported by FreeBSD:

Crypto engine
Display Engine 2.0 (sun8i/sun50i)
KEYADC
I2S/TDM
OWA
NAND
Smart card reader
Transport stream controller

The following features are not directly related to Allwinner SoCs but are often implemented on Allwinner boards:

Bluetooth UART (ng_h4)
SDIO wifi support

The Allwinner boot process

Most Allwinner systems use U-Boot as the boot program. Please see this page for details.

How to Build an Image

There are several different ways to build an image.

FreeBSD Release Engineering uses the release.sh script to build releases for various 32-bit and 64-bit arm targets.
The Crochet build tool (deprecated) supports boards including the Cubieboard 1, Cubieboard 2, Banana Pi, and Banana Pi M3.
Work is ongoing to support building images via the poudriere image command.
A GENERIDSD image is available for arm32, you just need to add u-boot on it and write it to an sdcard (See this page for how to add u-boot)

How to setup Xorg

Install the xorg and xf86-video-scfb packages, and add the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard1"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option      "Protocol"      "auto"
    Option      "Device"        "/dev/sysmouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Generic FB"
    Driver      "scfb"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen"
    Device      "Generic FB"
    Monitor     "Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
       Depth           24
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier  "layout"
    Screen      0 "Screen" 0 0
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection