Hardware
Physical hardware qualification: not yet established. PLANNED
No physical machine, device, or hardware family is supported. ABSD is qualified only under QEMU; first read-only boots on one physical machine have been observed and are recorded below as observations, not support. This page defines how hardware support will be stated, and lists exactly which emulated configurations are qualified.
Evidence tiers
Each hardware statement names one tier. A higher tier is never inferred from a lower one.
- Emulator-qualified
- A named emulator configuration (machine type, firmware, device models, CPU flags) passed the stated checks. Says nothing about real devices, even ones the model imitates.
- Exact-hardware-qualified
- One specific physical machine or device, identified by model, PCI IDs, and firmware version, passed the stated checks with a named ABSD build and workload. Covers that unit's configuration only.
- Machine-configuration-qualified
- A machine model in a stated configuration (firmware version and settings, fitted devices) passed the checks on more than one unit. Covers that configuration, not the model in general.
- Hardware-family-supported
- A family of devices (for example, a controller generation across PCI IDs) is supported on the strength of several exact or configuration qualifications and a driver written for the family's documented interface. Stated per family, with its known exceptions.
Current state
| Tier | Entries |
|---|---|
| Emulator-qualified | The QEMU configurations below MILESTONE-QUALIFIED |
| Exact-hardware-qualified | None PLANNED |
| Machine-configuration-qualified | None |
| Hardware-family-supported | None |
Emulator-qualified configurations
MILESTONE-QUALIFIED QEMU 8.2 with TCG on one Linux development host, x86-64, one CPU, -cpu max,vendor=GenuineIntel,+rdrand. Release absd-20261003.1 was later qualified on the same host under TCG and KVM, with an IDE disk or one NVMe namespace RELEASE-QUALIFIED; see its record.
| Configuration | What passed |
|---|---|
Default PC machine (i440fx), SeaBIOS; PIIX IDE disk as primary master (if=ide, raw image); e1000 on user networking | The operator system: served boot, SSH, file server, commands, durable-state and filesystem crash matrices, operator image. The whole platform check. |
| q35, OVMF (UEFI), boot image as a USB stick on xHCI (read by the firmware and boot loader, not by ABSD), NVMe as the only disk, VGA framebuffer, no serial port | The kernel's boot suite read back from the screen alone; timer interrupts and preemption; NVMe write, flush, and read-back with a test kernel, verified after a fresh boot and a warm reset. |
| The read-only physical boot image under SeaBIOS and OVMF | Boots to the expected screen; with write-requesting options, NVMe and ATA scratch images stay byte-identical and device traces show only identify and read commands. |
Device models covered:
- MILESTONE-QUALIFIED Intel 82540EM network controller model, PCI 8086:100e (QEMU
-device e1000). See e1000(4). - MILESTONE-QUALIFIED QEMU's NVMe controller model with a 512-byte-block namespace. See nvme(4).
- MILESTONE-QUALIFIED QEMU's PIIX IDE controller, ATA disk on the primary channel, PIO. See ata(4).
- MILESTONE-QUALIFIED Firmware: SeaBIOS (legacy boot) and OVMF (UEFI), both through GRUB's Multiboot2 path.
- MILESTONE-QUALIFIED Timer and interrupts: the legacy 8254 PIT through the 8259 PIC. The local APIC and I/O APIC are not used.
Physical Intel I219 and I225 Ethernet controllers, AHCI SATA, NVMe namespaces with 4 KiB blocks, and USB devices of any kind are not supported UNSUPPORTED. An emulated device model passing is not evidence that the physical device works.
Research configurations
VALIDATED Virtual machines used for research work after the milestone. None is part of a release. GICv3, the ARM filesystem run, and the USB probe are on development branches that have not been merged. Details and limits: status.
| Configuration | What ran |
|---|---|
| x86-64 QEMU with KVM on one development host, 2, 4, and 6 virtual CPUs | Several-CPU scheduling and migration. Switched off in ordinary boots and in every release. |
64-bit ARM: QEMU's virt machine, GICv2 or GICv3, virtio block device; TCG on the development host, and Apple's Hypervisor framework on one Mac | The kernel port and its test programs, and the filesystem as the first process. Not the operator system. A virtual machine on a Mac is not ARM hardware support: ABSD has not been booted on any physical ARM machine. |
x86-64 QEMU with TCG, qemu-xhci USB controller model | A boot-time probe that enumerates one directly attached device and reads its descriptor. No hubs, no device drivers, not run on a physical controller. |
Physical observations
EXPERIMENTAL-INTEGRATION Recorded so that they are not mistaken for support. None of this is a hardware qualification at any tier.
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| Machine | HP Z2 Mini G3 (Intel Xeon E3-1225 v5, four cores) |
| Devices | Samsung PM951 NVMe, PCI 144d:a802, read-only |
| Firmware | UEFI, booted from a USB stick through GRUB |
| ABSD build | A read-only probe image from a development branch, not a release; disk writes and flushes compiled out |
| Workload | Hardware survey, the kernel's process suite on the boot CPU only, NVMe identify and one sector read |
| Not tried | Other CPUs, networking, SSH, the file server, any disk write, reset and reboot paths |
| Evidence | Photographs of the final screen, read by hand; no automatic log collection |
| Date | 2026-10-05 (UTC), one evening |
What each hardware entry will record
PLANNED When a physical machine is qualified, its entry here will carry at least:
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| Machine or device | Vendor, model, and machine type; for a device, where it sits |
| PCI IDs | Vendor, device, subsystem, and revision of each device ABSD drives |
| Firmware | Firmware vendor and version; UEFI or legacy boot; settings changed from default (for example Secure Boot off) |
| ABSD build | Kernel and platform commits, image digest |
| Workload | What ran: boot suite only, read-only storage probe, SSH host, storage writes |
| Tier | One of the four above |
| Unsupported behaviour | What was seen not to work, or was not tried |
| Date | When the evidence was recorded |
Next steps
- PLANNED A first exact-hardware-qualified SSH host.
- PLANNED Several CPUs, reset, and result collection on the same physical machine, still read-only, before any disk write is considered.