Unix-like operating system OpenBSD 7.2 release: support Ampere Altra / Apple M2 / Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Wu Yanzu and Coje_He for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com news on October 21, the same day as Ubuntu 22.10, Theo de Raadt released the latest version of OpenBSD 7.2, a Unix-like operating system.

OpenBSD 7.2 now supports Ampere Altra Arm server processors. After the great success of Ampere Altra on Linux and the acceptance of Altra / Altra Max in the market by various public cloud service providers and other organizations, various BSD have been working to support Ampere Altra. OpenBSD 7.2also includes initial support for Apple's M2 chip, and its reverse engineering and driver writing work coincides with the work of Linux developers on Apple M1 / M2 support. CTOnews.com learned that exciting Arm support in OpenBSD 7.2 also includes initial support for Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Arm notebooks and other hardware using high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chips.

In addition to the initial support for Apple M2 and Ampere Altra, some other OpenBSD 7.2 changes include:

-some different SMP kernel improvements.

-provide new hardware drivers for various Apple, Qualcomm, SiFive,StarFive and Allwinner ASICs / IP blocks.

-support for Intel AX210 / AX211 WiFi chipsets.

-privilege separation has been added to more components, as well as various other security improvements.

-DRM display driver support is updated according to Linux 5.15.69, while Intel DRM driver support for Alder Lake and Raptor Lake is enabled.

-supports up to 256 CPU cores built by OpenBSD ARM64.

-improvements in various CPU frequency scaling.

-enable kstat in the kernel to export kernel statistics for reading by the kstat tool.

Downloads and more details on all changes to OpenBSD 7.2 can be found at OpenBSD.org.