Certification Status

This document provides an overview of the different certification statuses that Hardware API assigns based on the collected system information.

To learn more about the Hardware Certification process, please refer to the Hardware Certification documentation. To browse certified devices, visit the Ubuntu Certified page.

Information Collected

Hardware API collects various pieces of information about the system to determine the platform and configuration of the device because Ubuntu Certified status is granted at these broader abstractions of hardware. In order to determine the platform and configuration of a system, Hardware API collects the following information:

  • OS information.

    • OS release type & version. See os-release(5).

    • Running kernel (name, version, signature, and loaded modules). See lsmod(8).

    • Image type (if available)

  • DMI table hardware system information. See SMBIOS.

    • BIOS identity (name, version, and release date)

    • Motherboard identity (manufacturer, product name, and version)

    • Chassis identity (chassis type, manufacturer, sku, and version)

    • CPU identity (identifier, frequency, manufacturer, and version)

    • PCI IDs of peripherals attached

    • Amount and type of memory installed

    • Amount and type of non-volatile storage installed

Note

Hardware API does not yet support ARM64. This information is based on a work-in-progress implementation and may change in the future.

  • SoC identity information (/sys/devices/soc*)

  • Device trees

To learn more about the risks and information security measures in place to protect sensitive data, please refer to Security Overview.

Certification Statuses

Based on the collected information, Hardware API assigns one of the following certification statuses to the system:

  • Not Seen: Hardware API was unable to uniquely identify the system’s platform or configuration as part of the certification program. This response is typically returned for systems that are not yet certified or for which insufficient information could be collected.

  • Certified: Hardware API was able to uniquely identify the system’s platform and configuration. A matching certified configuration/platform exists in the database and the machine is running the OS that the configuration/platform is certified to work on.

  • Related Certified System Exists: Hardware API was able to identify the system’s platform. The system’s configuration is either not certified or could not be uniquely identified. However, there exists at least one certified configuration within the same platform.

  • Certified Image Exists: Hardware API was able to uniquely identify the system’s platform and configuration. However, the configuration is not certified for the running OS image type. There exists at least one OS image type for which the specific configuration is certified.

To learn more about the specific API responses and data formats, please refer to the Hardware API OpenAPI schema.