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→ARMv8 Server Standardization
The situation is different in the server space - companies want to be able to buy servers from any vendor and install a standard operating system. Jon Masters of Red Hat and others have led efforts to standardize the boot process and environment for ARMv8 servers, using UEFI for the boot process and ACPI for machine description. The move from Device Tree to ACPI has caused some grumbling from vendors, but it's a relatively straightforward evolutionary step, and much simpler than jumping from the machine number approach directly to ACPI.
This in turn has led to the development of the ARM ''[https://lwn.net/Articles/584123/ Server Base System Architecture]'' (SBSA) specification, which details the minimum hardware requirements for a standard ARMv8 server, and the ''[http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.den0044b/index.html Server Base Boot Requirements]'' (SBBR) specification, which details how the boot firmware should work. Any system following this specification these specifications should be able to boot a standard ARMv8 operating system from any vendor. Since this is a clean design in which we learned from previous industry mistakes, there is high hope that the boot situation on ARMv8 will be even better standardized than on x86_64.
Since EFI and ACPI were previously very x86-specific and tied to particular Windows releases, adopting these for ARM systems and non-Windows operating systems has led to changes in the management and governance of these standards.
