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<!--
$FreeBSD$
-->
<sect1 id="proc">
<title>Supported Processors and Motherboards</title>
<para>&os;/i386 runs on a wide variety of
<quote>IBM PC compatible</quote> machines. Due to the wide range of
hardware available for this architecture, it is impossible to
exhaustively list all combinations of equipment supported by &os;.
Nevertheless, some general guidelines are presented here.</para>
<para>Almost all i386-compatible processors are supported. All
Intel processors beginning with the 80386 are supported, including
the 80386, 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III,
Pentium 4, and variants thereof, such as the Xeon and Celeron
processors. (While technically supported, the use of the 80386SX is
specifically not recommended.) All i386-compatible AMD processors
are also supported, including the Am486, Am5x86, K5, K6 (and variants),
Athlon (including Athlon-MP, Athlon-XP, Athlon-4, and Athlon Thunderbird), and Duron processors.
The AMD Élan SC520 embedded processor is supported.
The Transmeta Crusoe is recognized
and supported, as are i386-compatible processors from Cyrix and
NexGen.</para>
<para>There is a wide variety of motherboards available for this
architecture. Motherboards using the ISA, VLB, EISA, AGP, and PCI
expansion busses are well-supported. There is some limited support
for the MCA (<quote>MicroChannel</quote>) expansion bus used in the
IBM PS/2 line of PCs.</para>
<para>Symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems are generally
supported by &os;, although in some cases, BIOS or motherboard bugs
may generate some problems. Perusal of the archives of the &a.smp;
may yield some clues.</para>
<para>&os; will take advantage of HyperThreading (HTT) support on
CPUs that support this feature. A kernel with the
<literal>SMP</literal> feature enabled will detect and start the
additional logical processors. The default &os; scheduler treats
the logical processors the same as additional physical
processors; in other words, no attempt is made to optimize
scheduling decisions given the shared resources between logical
processors within the same CPU.</para>
<para>&os; will generally run on i386-based laptops, albeit with
varying levels of support for certain hardware features such as
sound, graphics, power management, and PCCARD expansion slots.
These features tend to vary in idiosyncratic ways between machines,
and frequently require special-case support in &os; to work around
hardware bugs or other oddities. When in doubt, a search of the
archives of the &a.mobile; may be useful.</para>
</sect1>
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