AsiaBSDCon 2026

Sleep on FreeBSD: A bedtime story about S0ix
2026-03-22 , Room A

Modern laptops have largely abandoned the legacy ACPI S3 sleep state in favor of low-power idle states collectively known as S0ix. As a result, operating systems that rely on S3 for suspend-to-RAM functionality are increasingly unable to provide effective sleep support on contemporary hardware.

This talk presents ongoing work to implement suspend-to-idle (s2idle) and S0ix (specifically S0i3) support in FreeBSD. We describe the architectural differences between S3 and S0ix, the necessary kernel infrastructure for suspend-to-idle, platform coordination via ACPI System Power Management Controllers, and vendor-specific requirements, with a focus on AMD platforms.

I'm a software freelancer in Belgium and have been using FreeBSD since high school. I am contracted by the FreeBSD foundation to work on modern standby on FreeBSD, and also work for Klara. My primary interests lie in OSs and graphics.