===== FreeBSD Architectures and Tiers =====

With respect to which architectures %%FreeBSD%% runs on, there is continuing discussion of what constitutes a %%FreeBSD%% [[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/archs.html|tier]].  Instead of trying to see which architectures fit into which current definition, this page visualizes which [[https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/|platforms]] currently have which features.

Unfortunately, the %%FreeBSD%% Projects pages for some of these architectures are stale, so some of these are guesses.

There is little doubt that there are bugs in this chart. Please coordinate with [[/MarkLinimon|MarkLinimon]].

==== Architecture Feature Comparison ====

I have arbitrarily chosen to list the architectures starting with the i386 to perhaps make the colors line up better.

|  | x86 || arm || mips || powerpc ||| riscv | sparc64 (4) |
|  | i386 | amd64 | armvX | aarch64 | 32 | 64 | 32 | 64 | spe |  |  |
| boots multiuser | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ 4 |
| self-hosting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 1 | 1 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? | 4 |
| base compiler | clang | clang | clang | clang | gcc | gcc | 3 | 3 | 3 | clang | gcc |
| [[https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup|Release Engineering support]] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | x | 4 |
| freebsd-update(8) support | ✓ | ✓ | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| [[https://pkg.freebsd.org/|package build cluster]] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | x | ✓ | x | x | 2 |
| [[https://ci.freebsd.org/|src Jenkins]] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 4 |

==== Notes ====

  * 1) not expected to in 13
  * 2) [[/MarkLinimon|MarkLinimon]] used to have unofficial packages but they are now stale.
  * 3) gcc in 11/12, clang in 13
  * 4) to be gone in 13

==== See Also ====

  * [[https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=arch&sektion=7&arch=d efault&format=html|arch(7)]]
  * [[ToolChain/ArchMatrix|ToolChain/ArchMatrix]] (stale)
  * [[https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup|Supported FreeBSD Releases]]
  * [[https://www.freebsd.org/releng/|FreeBSD Release Engineering Information]]
  * [[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/archs.html|FreeBSD support tiers]]
  * [[https://ci.freebsd.org|FreeBSD Jenkins]]

==== Observations ====

The above was partially adopted from this [[https://people.freebsd.org/~linimon/architectures/index.html|ancient guide]] from 2004.