Re: Future of armv7

On January 3, 2026 7:58:27 AM GMT+02:00, Adrian Chadd <[email protected]> wrote:
>[snip]
>
>It /looks/ like the chipset vendors are minting new armv7 based low end SoCs?
>
>Ie, targeting all the embedded stuff that doesn't require a web browser. ;-)
>
>I think the pressure right now is "do we really want to keep /any/ 32
>bit platforms around?".
>If you're using armv7 in products / local devices then please do
>consider / continue contributing work
>to FreeBSD on them. I /think/ thats what srcmgr@ is looking for.
>
>
>
>
>-adrian
>


it's all cost i guess. cost and features


before this full chip (or world) reset, you could buy some of those h3/h2/h2+ boards in <10€, even ~5€ (in bulk). god damnit, entire sbc!

granted, this is probably not the industrial soc, but it works

after a crisis i assumed that 32bit will not come back but it did. either someone was just market speculating and hoarding or they just make new chips too

maybe not designing, but making

judging from price, i don't see supply running out

prices have overall tripled for various reasons

well i don't know much about stuff like that. all i know is that those things are available. even marked as lts


while 32bit code is maybe harder to maintain, devices don't cost anything


i can also see some 64bit socs, but those are less supported


it's quite tempting to look at fbsd hw support and then go into stores, sort by price and try to find hw


there's also a security aspect, if os vendor support goes away, if os is open like fbsd is, hw vendor could try to support it on it's own, then finally drops it

when that happens, it can't tell any of clients that oh btw you should burn those devices now

i'm not forcing people to code, but this is what happens

if devices are like phones, they work until they fall apart. all of them are connected directly to internet. being firewalled or natted isn't helping either


of course i don't know how this support plan is going to work. (un)fortunately devices work forever. ok maybe not forver but many decades

judging from current new armv7 hw availability, maybe some of them still work in 2100

which version of fbsd they will be running? 17.0? 25.0? or 90.0?

i mean unless we pull actual ai thing off and unless it changes or something else radical happens out of science fiction, this is how it will be!


so yes i have interest in armv7 due availability and cost

plan to use it for hobby and maybe even for work. i don't think it matter much i guess. latter could mean i could give something back besides just "using it"


now, if armv7 becomes like actual 386 nowadays, that will change things


anyway, i guess that all hw and sw will outlive their creators anyway


i have here, a bbb, which is 13 years old. works. maybe i'm powering it wrong now or it has developed some transient fault, or had sw bug, but it seemed to crash and didn't watchdog recover. buf after power cycle it was ok again, didn't look inside of it. i haven't yet figured out how to run fbsd 16 on it. and my dev env from the time broke. but this could be viewed as vendor disappeared type scenario


so yeah, even if all 32bit sw on the planet is abadoned, it will work still


maybe it's easier and cheaper to somehow get replacement hw supported in 64bit that would have same feature set and cost of 32bit hw

so any new people don't buy new old 32bit hw and later complain about support going away. or just leave it unsupported by then


what is cost of armv7 per year? in money and people


then there's ports. i don't see many ports losing 32bit right now. but those embedded things might not use ports at all. what if they just use c program that connects gpio to tcp/ip, kind of


oh, nevermind. maybe eventually 32bit dies of natural death but i don't really see it now. right now policy is to support every major version for 4y. well that can be changed

so yeah who knows what will happen

even if 32bit hw discontinues, the existing will keep working. i wonder how much hw keeps running fbsd that fbsd no longer supports. maybe mips. etc. maybe 486? right now iirc actual 486 is still in. or some components are removed already

anyway, even if armv7 is dropped, someone will keep running it. we have nice license too, that you can do whatever you wish, as long as you tell who wrote it and keep conditions


but i'm still encouraging to let armv7 die from natural causes. say you can't buy a armv7 soc anymore. all the devices out in the wild die. or devs die, or whatever

can't really go around and say please stop making new armv7 hw, we want to discontinue it but can't since users keep buying those and complain to us

oh and armv7 making is business too. there will be no armv7 if you can't find buyer or if your production gets too expensive. or technologically ages. or whatever

how many people use 3.5" floppy daily? usage is definitely there but not massive


so yeah, no idea of future. i plan to keep using it. it's not i'm hellbent on pissing people off. just went to check in sellers and yep, armv7 is in stock


actually i haven't checked on why h3 was added and why is entire of if's periphs supported so well. probably because nice open specs and price. it has brother, higher priced h5

even armv6 it still supported, for rpi. however those rpis aren't seemingly no longer made. so it only leaves the existing devices

but for 32bit armv7, one can buy new hw


so no idea really what to think of all this?