ARM as a primary architecture

[Jon Masters]

On 03/26/2012 08:00 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

> Which leads me to a rant about ARM.  Grrrr RANT!!  I didn't think I'd
> ever love the BIOS, but compared to the alternatives (UEFI and a
> million different ARM bootloaders) it's simple and effective.

There is some truth to that. Nobody is going to stand up and say that
the 32-bit ARM "zoo" (as I have called it on a number of occasions) is a
situation today. This is a case where strong leadership and aggressive
standardization is required in order to have *one* platform. That work
is ongoing at the moment, and in the interim, we live with slightly more
pain than would be ideal. But therein lies the fun ;)

In the future, ARM systems will transition increasingly to UEFI. Many
ARM server systems will likely eventually boot with ACPI as well. They
will smell like low-energy alternatives to PC servers over time, and in
another decade or two something more exciting than UEFI will replace
UEFI and folks will mail about how things were better with UEFI!

Jon.