OpenBSD 8.0 Raises the amd64 Kernel Address Space to 512G, Adds arm64 Hibernate and Retires the loongson Port
OpenBSD 8.0, released October 20, 2026, grows amd64 kernel virtual address space from 4G to 512G, adds arm64 hibernate and RISC-V vector support, and ends loongson support.
Editor's Note ·
- Clarification:
- The article quotes the release page as saying "Added 802.11n support to qwx(4)." The page actually reads "Add 802.11n support to qwx(4). Advertise HT capabilities and pass HT/QoS peer association." The substance is unchanged; only the tense of the quoted wording differed.
Overview
The OpenBSD project released version 8.0 on October 20, 2026, which its release page describes as the “61st OpenBSD release.” LWN.net summarized the release as including “the addition of hibernate support for arm64, an increase in the kernel virtual address space for amd64 to 512GB, quite a few improvements for the qwx driver that supports Qualcomm WiFi 6 devices, and much more.”
The project’s page calls its list “a partial list of new features and systems” and points to a separate detailed changelog.
What Changed
Platforms
On amd64, the release page lists that the project “Raised the size of amd64 kernel virtual address space from 4G to 512G.” It adds that the pmap(9) direct map is now placed at a random location, and that swap encryption is sped up by using AES CPU instructions. In the graphics section, the page says the larger address space “allows mapping more than 4GB of VRAM.”
On arm64, the page lists “Added hibernate support.” For riscv64, it lists “Added kernel support for the ‘V’ vector extension.” The sparc64 port was switched to the LLVM toolchain. The page also records the end of one port: “Retired support for loongson architecture (not working with Clang 22).”
Kernel, virtualization and hardware
The kernel gains getexecpath(3), described on the release page as providing a copy of the elf(5) program’s execution path. For virtual machines, the release page lists “MP support for up to 64 VCPUs per guest VM” and x2apic mode support for guest virtual machines.
On the hardware side, the release page lists support for Intel Arc A-Series (DG2/Alchemist) graphics cards in inteldrm(4) and Intel E610 Ethernet devices in the ix(4) driver. Its wireless section includes a long run of qwx(4) fixes, including “Added 802.11n support to qwx(4).”
Security and tooling
The security section of the release page includes updating libexpat to version 2.8.4, with CVE-2026-66046, CVE-2026-76641 and CVE-2026-76957 listed, as well as “Hardened syspatch(8) against malicious scripts” and “Stopped pax(1) extracting malicious archives outside the working directory.” In the installer and package tooling, it lists that the current directory was removed from the default pkg_add(1) search path.
Packages
According to the release page, pre-built package counts include 13060 for amd64 and 12907 for aarch64. Highlighted ports include GCC 16.1.0, Go 1.27.1, LLVM/Clang 21.1.8 and 22.1.8, and Mozilla Firefox 157.0 and ESR 153.4.0.
What We Don’t Know
The sources reviewed here are the project’s own release page and a short LWN.net brief. Neither provides benchmarks for the address-space change or hibernate support, and neither states how many systems run the new release. Full details sit in the project’s changelog, which this article did not review line by line.