Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9

posted onJune 24, 2013
by l33tdawg
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2013/05/ps4streaming-660x361.jpg
Credit: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2013/05/ps4streaming-660x361.jpg

The operating system at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 4 is FreeBSD 9.0.

It's been exposed that the operating system powering the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a Sony spin of FreeBSD 9.0. It's not a huge surprise FreeBSD is being used over Linux, in part due to the more liberal licensing. The PlayStation 4 is x86_64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD.

It's a bit of a surprise to see FreeBSD being used though when at the heart of the Sony PS4 is an AMD eight-core APU with Radeon graphics. There isn't a Catalyst driver available for any BSD operating system right now and the open-source driver ported from Linux with Radeon KMS and Gallium3D is still in a primitive state. Thus, Sony in cooperation with AMD must have developed their own graphics driver for the PlayStation 4 with FreeBSD or at least ported the Catalyst code-base to BSD.

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BSD Sony Playstation PS4

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