This page describes running %%FreeBSD%% on %%OpenPOWER%% POWER8 systems, such as the [[http://tyan.com/EN/solution/openpower-GN70BP010/index.html|Tyan GN70-BP010]].

:!: as of 20190219 some changes to enhance stability have been committed.  If you have previously had problems with POWER8, try -CURRENT.

There are two ways to run these machines. %%FreeBSD%% targets both.

===== PowerKVM =====

%%PowerKVM%% is the more mature of the two since it provides a firmware and hypervisor interface matching previous POWER systems. It is available on all supported %%FreeBSD%% releases.

The following incantations are sufficient to bring up %%FreeBSD%% on an Ubuntu 14.10 host:

<code>
root@ubuntu:~# ppc64_cpu --smt=off
root@ubuntu:~# modprobe -a kvm-hv
root@ubuntu:~# echo 100 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages
root@ubuntu:~# mkdir /dev/hugepages
root@ubuntu:~# mount -t hugetlbfs huge /dev/hugepages
root@ubuntu:~# qemu-system-ppc64 -enable-kvm -m 1536 -nographic -vga none -cdrom FreeBSD.iso -mem-prealloc -mem-path /dev/hugepages -smp cores=3 threads=8
</code>

===== Bare Metal =====

%%PowerNV%% support has been merged to HEAD and is accessible since r330240

==== Supported features ====

  * Basic architecture support
    * Memory Management Unit
    * Interrupts
    * System timers
    * OPAL console
  * SMP, up to 128 CPUs were tested
  * Multiuser environment
  * PCIe bus with IOMMU and full IO cache coherency
  * USB XHCI controller
  * Device drivers:
    * Chelsio cxgbe(4)
    * NVMe SSD
  * OPAL I2C and RTC drivers
  * Deep sleep modes for idle cores

==== TODO list ====

  * [[https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=232549|IPMI problem]]