Contents

FreeBSD/ARM on the Bananapi family (R64/R2/R2-PRO/R3/R4)

FreeBSD/ARM on the Bananapi family (R64/R2/R2-PRO/R3/R4)

What is Bananapi-R64 Pi?

SoC: MediaTek MT7622 (Dual-core ARM Cortex-A53)
RAM: 1GB DDR3
Storage: microSD, eMMC
Network: 5x Gigabit Ethernet, onboard WiFi (MT7615), miniPCIe slot
USB: 1x USB 3.0
UART: 3x serial ports
GPIO, I2C, SPI, PWM support

How to build the experimental code

Code is in here:

1. https://github.com/Martinfx/freebsd-src/tree/max-support-mediatek-7622-bananapir64

Build kernel from source and copy kernel.bin to tftpboot:

2. sudo git pull; sudo make buildkernel buildworld TARGET_ARCH=aarch64 TARGET=arm64 KERNCONF=MEDIATEK -j12 ;sudo cp -vR /usr/obj/usr/src/arm64.aarch64/sys/MEDIATEK/kernel.bin /tftpboot

or install the kernel to mount the folder:

3. sudo make installkernel installworld distrib-dirs distribution TARGET_ARCH=aarch64 TARGET=arm64 KERNCONF=MEDIATEK -j12 DESTDIR=/mnt/freebsd/

root@bpi-r64 ~# less /etc/rc.conf
hostname="bpi-r64"
ntpd_enable="YES"
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"
dnsmasq_enable="YES"
sshd_enable="YES"
pf_enable="YES"
gateway_enable="YES"                        # net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
defaultrouter="192.168.10.1"
defaultroute_delay="0"
ifconfig_mtge1="DHCP"                      # WAN – od domácího routeru
ifconfig_mtge0="inet 192.168.20.1/24"     # LAN – tvoje síť za routerem

ext_if = "mtge1"
int_if = "mtge0"

set skip on { lo0 $int_if }

nat on $ext_if inet from $int_if:network to any -> ($ext_if)
pass all


Connecting to host 192.168.10.94, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.10.99 port 42733 connected to 192.168.10.94 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.01   sec   113 MBytes   938 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   1.01-2.00   sec   111 MBytes   939 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec   112 MBytes   934 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   3.00-4.01   sec   113 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   4.01-5.00   sec   110 MBytes   935 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   5.00-6.01   sec   113 MBytes   938 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   6.01-7.00   sec   110 MBytes   932 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec   112 MBytes   937 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   111 MBytes   933 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec   112 MBytes   938 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
[  5]  10.00-11.00  sec   112 MBytes   935 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes
^C[  5]  11.00-11.92  sec   102 MBytes   939 Mbits/sec    0    728 KBytes

You can also boot from tftpboot...

Peripherals Support Table

Peripheral	Status	Notes
SD Card (mmc0)	Working
eMMC	Not supported
Ethernet (LAN)	experimental	speed 940 Mbits/sec
Ethernet (WAN)	experimental	speed 940 Mbits/sec
Ethernet switch 7531	experimental	Driver WIP, needs more testing
WiFi (MT7615)	experimental	needs more testing mt7615 speed 100/100
USB 3.0	Working
USB 2.0	Working
UART0 (console)	Working	Default console
UART1/2	Disabled
GPIO	Partial	Basic gpio WIP, need test
Pinctrl	Working	Basic pinctrl
SPI	Not supported
I2C	Not supported
PWM	Not supported
SATA	Not supported
miniPCIe	experimental	Use for extra WiFi cards mt7615
RTC	Partial	Internal RTC supported
Watchdog	Working	Driver WIP, needs more testing
Xhci	Working	Driver WIP, needs more testing
Clocks + clocks pll	Working	Driver WIP, needs more testing

What is Bananapi-R2 Pro?

Peripherals Support Table

Peripheral	Status	Notes
SD Card (mmc0)	Working
eMMC	Not supported
Ethernet (LAN)	Working	only ChaosBSD
Ethernet (WAN)	Working	only ChaosBSD
WiFi (MT7615)	Not supported	No driver in FreeBSD yet (mt76 missing)
USB 3.0	Broken	not working
UART0 (console)	Working	Default console
UART1/2	Disabled
GPIO	Working	Basic gpio WIP, need test
Pinctrl	Working	Basic pinctrl
SPI	Not supported
I2C	Working
PWM	Not supported
Sata	Developing	not tested
miniPCIe	Working	Use for extra WiFi cards, not tested
RTC	Working	Internal RTC supported
Watchdog	Working
Clocks	Working

For bananapi-r2-pro, there is a bug in AHCI
For bananapi-r2-pro, there is a bug in PCIE (freeze, but wait for .dts patch)
more: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/compare/main...Martinfx:freebsd-src:max-support-bananapi-r2-pro

Support for the Ethernet MT7531 switch has been merged into ChaosBSD

What is Banana Pi BPI-R2 (MediaTek MT7623N)

Peripherals Support Table

Peripheral	Status	Notes
SD Card (mmc0)	Not supported
eMMC	Not supported
Ethernet (LAN)	Not supported
Ethernet (WAN)	Not supported
WiFi (MT7615)	Not supported
USB 3.0	Not supported	not working
UART0 (console)		Default console
UART1/2	Disabled
GPIO	Not supported
Pinctrl	Not supported
SPI	Not supported
I2C	Not supported
PWM	Not supported
Sata	Not supported
miniPCIe	Not supported
RTC	Not supported
Watchdog	Not supported
Clocks	working on
Switch 7530	Not supported

Contents

FreeBSD/ARM on the Bananapi family (R64/R2/R2-PRO/R3/R4)

Overview

This page tracks the work-in-progress FreeBSD port to the MediaTek MT7623 SoC, using the Banana Pi BPI-R2 as the reference board.

The MT7623 is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (armv7) SoC and is register-level very close to the MediaTek MT2701; all clock drivers written so far probe on both, so MT2701 gets partial support for free.

The port lives in a new SoC directory, sys/arm/mediatek/, and is built as part of the armv7 GENERIC kernel.

Status: work in progress, not yet merged into FreeBSD main.

Hardware

Item	Detail
SoC	MediaTek MT7623N
CPU	4x ARM Cortex-A7, up to 1.3 GHz (OPP table 98 MHz - 1300 MHz)
Architecture	armv7
RAM	2 GB DDR3 at 0x80000000
Interrupt controller	ARM GIC (Cortex-A7 GIC)
Timer	ARM generic timer, plus MediaTek APXGPT block at 0x10008000
Console	uart2 at 0x11004000, 115200n8
Ethernet	2x GMAC plus MT7530 switch (1x WAN, 4x LAN)
Storage	eMMC, microSD, SPI-NOR, NAND
PMIC	MediaTek MT6323
Other	HDMI, PCIe, USB (xHCI plus MUSB), SATA, I2C, SPI, PWM, Mali-450 GPU

The device tree already present in the FreeBSD tree is sys/contrib/device-tree/src/arm/mediatek/mt7623n-bananapi-bpi-r2.dts (compatible = "bananapi,bpi-r2", "mediatek,mt7623"), so no out-of-tree DTS is required.

Current status

The board brings up the platform layer, all four cores, the serial console, the clock tree, reset controllers, pin muxing and GPIO. Peripheral drivers (networking, storage, USB, PCIe) are not written yet.

Implemented

Component	Source file	Notes
Platform / machdep	`mt7623_machdep.c`	FDT platform for `mediatek,mt7623`, devmap, DELAY, generic timer bring-up
SMP	`mt7623_mp.c`	Starts the secondary Cortex-A7 cores
UART	`mt7623_uart.c`	ns8250 derivative, console and `EARLY_PRINTF`
Clock framework	`mdtk_clk.c`, `mdtk_clk.h`	Registration layer over the FreeBSD clk framework
PLL	`mt_clk_pll.c`, `mt_clk_pll.h`	MediaTek PLL clknode
topckgen	`mt7623_topgen.c`	Top clock generator: muxes, gates, dividers
apmixedsys	`mt7623_apmixedsys.c`	PLL block
infracfg	`mt7623_infracfg.c`	Clocks plus reset controller
pericfg	`mt7623_pericfg.c`	Clocks plus reset controller
hifsys	`mt7623_hifsys.c`	Clocks plus reset controller
imgsys	`mt7623_imgsys.c`	Clock gates
bdpsys	`mt7623_bdpsys.c`	Clock gates
audsys	`mt7623_audsys.c`	Clock gates
vdecsys	`mt7623_vdecsys.c`	Clock gates
syscon	`mt7623_syscfg.c`	`mediatek,mt7623-pctl-a-syscfg` via `simple_mfd`
pinctrl	`mt7623_pinctrl.c`	Pin muxing via `GPIO_MODE` registers
GPIO	`mt7623_pinctrl.c`	`gpio_if` on the same regmap

Not implemented yet

Everything below is described by the device tree but has no driver:

Component	Device tree compatible	Priority
Ethernet MAC	`mediatek,mt7623-eth`, `mediatek,mt7623-ethsys`	High
Ethernet switch	`mediatek,mt7530`	High
eMMC / SD	`mediatek,mt7623-mmc`	High
Watchdog / reset	`mediatek,mt7623-wdt`	High, needed for reboot
USB	`mediatek,mt7623-xhci`, `-tphy`, `-musb`	Medium
PCIe	`mediatek,mt7623-pcie`	Medium
I2C	`mediatek,mt7623-i2c`	Medium
SPI / SPI-NOR	`mediatek,mt7623-spi`, `-nor`	Medium
NAND	`mediatek,mt7623-nfc`, `-ecc`	Low
PWM	`mediatek,mt7623-pwm`	Low
ADC	`mediatek,mt7623-auxadc`	Low
Thermal	`mediatek,mt7623-thermal`	Low
RNG	`mediatek,mt7623-rng`	Low
eFuse	`mediatek,mt7623-efuse`	Low
PMIC wrapper	`mediatek,mt7623-pwrap`	Low, needed for MT6323
Power domains	`mediatek,mt7623-scpsys`	Low
IOMMU / SMI	`mediatek,mt7623-m4u`, `-smi-common`, `-smi-larb`	Low
Crypto	`mediatek,eip97-crypto`	Low
DMA	`mediatek,mt7623-hsdma`	Low
Display / HDMI	`mediatek,mt7623-mmsys`, `-hdmi`, `-dsi`, `-dpi`, `-mipi-tx`	Low
GPU	`mediatek,mt7623-mali`	Low

Source

The work is kept on a branch in a GitHub fork:

Branch: Martinfx/freebsd-src, branch max-support-bananapi-bpi-r2-7623

At the time of writing the branch carries 16 commits on top of FreeBSD main, adding roughly 4300 lines across 23 files. Apart from three lines of build glue, all of it is new code under sys/arm/mediatek/.

git clone https://github.com/Martinfx/freebsd-src.git
cd freebsd-src
git checkout max-support-bananapi-bpi-r2-7623

Building

The board is covered by the armv7 GENERIC kernel; the branch adds files.mediatek and the SOC_MEDIATEK option to it, plus a DTB module for the board.

make TARGET=arm TARGET_ARCH=armv7 KERNCONF=GENERIC buildkernel

The device tree blob is built by sys/modules/dtb/mediatek, which is wired into GENERIC through MODULES_EXTRA.

Implementation notes

Generic timer needs GPT6 ungated

On MT6589, MT7623, MT8127 and MT8135 the input clock of the ARM generic timer is gated behind GPT6 in the APXGPT block. Until GPT6 is enabled, CNTPCT never advances and the kernel hangs as soon as the generic timer is used as the event timer.

mt7623_late_init() therefore maps the APXGPT block at 0x10008000, puts GPT6 into free-running mode, and programs CNTFRQ to 13 MHz, because the firmware on this board leaves it unset. It then samples CNTPCT twice to confirm the counter is really ticking, and falls back to a GPT4-based DELAY() implementation if it is not.

Secondary core startup

MT7623 does not use PSCI for SMP. mt7623_mp_start_ap() writes the kernel entry point into the jump register of the MediaTek boot block at 0x10202000, then writes a per-core magic key (0x534c4131, 0x4c415332, 0x41534c33) into the matching core register and kicks the core with an SGI through the GIC distributor. The core count is read from L2CTLR.

Clock drivers

mdtk_clk.c is a small registration layer: each clock domain driver declares tables of fixed, link, mux, gate, divider and PLL nodes, and mdtk_register_clocks() turns them into a clock domain. This keeps the individual domain drivers close to the layout of the Linux driver they were derived from, which makes them easy to check against the datasheet.

The infracfg, pericfg and hifsys drivers additionally implement hwreset_assert, so they act as reset controllers as well.

pinctrl and GPIO

Pin functions live in the GPIO_MODE registers, five 3-bit fields per 32-bit register starting at offset 0x760 with a 0x10 stride, reached through the pctl-a-syscfg regmap. GPIO direction, output and input use one bit per pin, 16 pins per register, at 0x000, 0x500 and 0x630 respectively; each has atomic SET and CLR sub-registers, which the driver uses instead of read-modify-write.

UART

mt7623_uart.c subclasses the ns8250 driver and only overrides the parts MediaTek changed, mainly the interrupt enable register handling (ier_rxbits, ier_mask) plus attach, grab and ungrab. It matches mediatek,mt6577-uart, which is the fallback compatible string on every MT7623 serial node.

TODO

Ordered roughly by usefulness:

Watchdog driver, so that platform_cpu_reset() can reboot the board instead of panicking.
MMC driver, so the system can be booted from eMMC or microSD.
Ethernet MAC and MT7530 switch driver, the main reason to run FreeBSD on this board.
Finish pinctrl: bias-disable, bias-pull-up, bias-pull-down and drive strength are not handled yet, only pin muxing.
Move the bring-up debug settings out of sys/arm/conf/GENERIC. The branch currently adds KDB, DDB, GDB, BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER, BOOTVERBOSE, EARLY_PRINTF and the SOCDEV_PA/SOCDEV_VA pair straight into the shared armv7 GENERIC; that is fine for development but has to go into a separate kernel config before this can be proposed for main.
USB and PCIe.

What is Bananapi-R3?

Peripherals Support Table

Device Tree Node	Compatible	Function	Status	Notes
watchdog@1001c000	`mediatek,mt7986-wdt`	Watchdog Timer	No driver attached	Watchdog driver missing
apmixedsys@1001e000	`mediatek,mt7986-apmixedsys`	PLL / Clock Controller	No driver attached	Required for clock framework
pinctrl@1001f000	`mediatek,mt7986a-pinctrl`	Pin Multiplexing / GPIO	No driver attached	Critical dependency for GPIO and peripherals
pwm@10048000	`mediatek,mt7986-pwm`	PWM Controller	No driver attached	PWM output support missing
rng@1020f000	`mediatek,mt7986-rng`	Hardware Random Generator	No driver attached	Entropy source
crypto@10320000	`inside-secure,safexcel-eip97`	Crypto Accelerator	No driver attached	Hardware AES/SHA/IPsec offload
serial@11002000	`mediatek,mt7986-uart`	UART1	No driver attached	Clock dependency unresolved
serial@11003000	`mediatek,mt7986-uart`	UART2	No driver attached	Clock dependency unresolved
serial@11004000	`mediatek,mt7986-uart`	UART3	No driver attached	Clock dependency unresolved
i2c@11008000	`mediatek,mt7986-i2c`	I²C Controller	No driver attached	Required for sensors and PMICs
spi@1100a000	`mediatek,mt7986-spi-ipm`	SPI Controller 0	No driver attached	Flash and peripheral support
spi@1100b000	`mediatek,mt7986-spi-ipm`	SPI Controller 1	No driver attached	Flash and peripheral support
thermal@1100c800	`mediatek,mt7986-thermal`	Thermal Sensor	No driver attached	Temperature monitoring
adc@1100d000	`mediatek,mt7986-auxadc`	ADC	Disabled / No driver	Analog input support
usb@11200000	`mediatek,mt7986-xhci`	USB 3.0 XHCI	No driver attached	USB host controller
mmc@11230000	`mediatek,mt7986-mmc`	SD/eMMC Controller	Disabled / No driver	Storage support
pcie@11280000	`mediatek,mt7986-pcie`	PCIe Host Bridge	No driver attached	PCIe subsystem support
t-phy	`mediatek,mt7986-tphy`	USB/PCIe PHY	No driver attached	PHY framework required
efuse@11d00000	`mediatek,mt7986-efuse`	eFuse Controller	No driver attached	Calibration and MAC address storage
t-phy@11e10000	`mediatek,mt7986-tphy`	PHY Controller	No driver attached	PHY framework required
ethernet@15100000	`mediatek,mt7986-eth`	Ethernet MAC + DMA	No driver attached	Core networking functionality
wifi@18000000	`mediatek,mt7986-wmac`	Integrated Wi-Fi 6 MAC	No driver attached	Wireless subsystem
pwm-fan	`pwm-fan`	PWM Fan Controller	No driver attached	Depends on PWM support
gpio-keys	`gpio-keys`	GPIO Buttons	No driver attached	Depends on GPIO framework
i2c-gpio-0	`i2c-gpio`	GPIO Bitbang I²C	No driver attached	Depends on GPIO support
i2c-gpio-1	`i2c-gpio`	GPIO Bitbang I²C	No driver attached	Depends on GPIO support
sfp-1	`sff,sfp`	SFP Cage	No driver attached	Optical module support
sfp-2	`sff,sfp`	SFP Cage	No driver attached	Optical module support

Additional Issues

Component	Issue
OFW Resource Allocation	`ofwbus0: no default resources for rid = 4, type = 1`
ARM Generic Timer	`could not allocate irq for optional interrupt 'hyp-virt'`
UART Clock Framework	`uart0: Cannot get UART clock: 6`
GPIO LED Support	`failed to map pin`
Pinctrl Framework	Likely root cause of GPIO LED failures
Clock Framework	Required by UART, Ethernet, USB, PCIe, GPIO and other peripherals

Suggested Driver Implementation Order

MT7986 Clock Framework (apmixedsys / topckgen / infracfg)
MT7986 Pinctrl
MT7986 GPIO
MT7986 Ethernet
MT7986 XHCI USB
MT7986 PCIe
MT7986 I²C
MT7986 SPI
MT7986 Wi-Fi (WMAC)
Remaining drivers (Thermal, RNG, Crypto, PWM, Watchdog)

Notes

The missing clock framework appears to be the primary blocker. Multiple subsystems already fail due to unresolved clock dependencies, including UART devices.

The missing pinctrl driver is also critical because GPIO-based devices (LEDs, GPIO keys, I²C-GPIO) cannot function correctly without proper pin mapping and mux configuration.

Once clock and pinctrl support are available, a significant portion of the currently unattached devices should become functional or at least probe successfully.