Linaro engineers implementing ACPI for ARMv8

Posted by – March 13, 2014

Linaro is working on implementing ACPI for general purpose servers using the ARMv8 architecture. This has been controversial as it is a competing technology to FDT which has been used now for the 32bit ARM world.

ACPI has been chosen on for the general purpose servers to allow standard distributions such as RHEL and Ubuntu server to boot on hardware which they have no special support in the same way as x86 world. ACPI is used to abstract the hardware to the level the standard distribution can boot to the point it can be useful.

There is a large overlap between FDT and ACPI but they actually do things a different way. FDT is currently holding fast the the mobile and tablets market for ARM. But with Intel implementing ACPI phones and tablets nothing is certain for the future.

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