System Architecture

Server Base System Architecture

Arm architecture covers a wide range of products, across many market segments, from embedded control, to mobile, to servers. Base System Architectures (BSA) provide hardware requirements for a given type of product or market segment. The requirements are intended to ensure standard software, or operating systems, will operate correctly on machines compliant with the BSA.

The Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) is the BSA for servers. The specification is developed in conjunction with partners across the industry:

• OS vendors
• Hypervisor, Silicon and BIOS vendors
• IHVs, OEMs and ODMs.

Server Base Boot Requirements

Operating systems running on standard server hardware require standard firmware interfaces to be present in order to boot and function correctly. The Server Base Board Boot Requirements (SBBR) document describes these firmware requirements.

The SBBR covers UEFI, ACPI and SMBIOS industry standards as well as standards specific to Arm, such as PSCI.

Together with SBSA, the SBBR provides a standard based approach to building Arm servers and their firmware. The specification is developed in conjunctions with partners across the industry:

• OS vendors
• Hypervisor, Silicon and BIOS vendors
• IHVs, OEMs and ODMs.

Architectural compliance suites

Arm provides test suites for SBSA/SBBR covering:

• SBSA hardware requirements (CPU, interrupts, IOMMU, PCIe,…) properties
• SBBR defined FW requirements (UEFI, ACPI and SMBIOS tests)

Latest release: Server Architectural Compliance Suite v1.0

The test suites are hosted in gitbub and are open source (Apachev2):

Arm is aiming to expand the test suites into a server certification process - watch this space for future announcements