[ajxs]

> On an (X86) PC you can tranfer your disk, as it is, to a new X86 architecture and it will run.

This is because of a supporting set of standards (BIOS/UEFI/ACPI) that are well-supported on x86 systems, but technically independent of the x86 ISA. BIOS, and the general compatibility you're talking about, is a historical artefact of the IBM PC being so dominant in the market that other companies created compatible computers. UEFI and ACPI actually exist in the ARM ecosystem now. If ARM continues to grow outside of mobile devices, you could eventually see the kind of broad compatibility you're talking about. It's not super likely though. All signs point to the consumer computing ecosystem becoming more closed, rather than more open.

[gzread]

Then ARM should create and promote similar standards.

[egil]

They have the ServerReady compliance program for servers[0], but not for the plethora of SoC boards out there.

[0] https://developer.arm.com/community/arm-community-blogs/b/ar...

[hakfoo]

I always wondered how ARM lost the plot there.

Considering the original ARM use case was a desktop-computer shaped thing with some degree of expandability, they had to solve the same problems that the PC did in bringup/enumeration/device abstraction. These should be solved problems.

At some point between Archimedes and iPhone, they lost this functionality. I assume there was a moment where they assumed that they were only doing SoCs with fixed peripherals and jettisoned all their knowledge and tooling in the space.