Chapter 2. System Requirements Server versions of ARMv8 hardware are typically configured using the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) standards. These two pro- vide common, device-independent ways to boot and configure computer hardware. They are also common in the x86 PC world. Ubuntu provides generic arm64 kernel images for various supported platforms listed in Ubuntu Wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/Server/Install). You can check that page for platform-specific instal- lation notes. When using debian-installer on non-UEFI systems, you may have to manually make the system bootable at the end of the installation, e.g. by running the required commands in a shell started from within debian-installer . flash-kernel knows how to set up an X-Gene system booting with U- Boot. The multiplatform support in the arm64 Linux kernel may also allow running debian-installer on arm64 systems not explicitly listed above. So long as the kernel used by debian-installer has support for the target system’s components, and a device-tree file for that target is available, a new target system may work just fine. In these cases, the installer can usually provide a working installation, and so long as UEFI is in use, it should be able to make the system bootable as well. If UEFI is not used you may also need to perform some manual configuration steps to make the system bootable. Multiprocessor support — also called “symmetric multiprocessing” or SMP — is available for this architecture. Having multiple processors in a computer was originally only an issue for high-end server systems but has become common in recent years nearly everywhere with the introduction of so called “multi-core” processors. These contain two or more processor units, called “cores”, in one physical chip. The standard Ubuntu 20.04 kernel image has been compiled with SMP support. It is also usable on non-SMP systems without problems. Ubuntu’s support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying support found in X.Org’s X11 system, and the kernel. Basic framebuffer graphics is provided by the kernel, whilst desktop environments use X11. Whether advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional “firmware” images (see Section 2.2). Nearly all ARM machines have the graphics hardware built-in, rather than being on a plug-in card. Some machines do have expansion slots which will take graphics cards, but that is a rarity. Hardware designed to be headless with no graphics at all is quite common. Whilst basic framebuffer video provided by the kernel should work on all devices that have graphics, fast 3D graphics invariably needs binary drivers to work. The situation is changing quickly but at the time of the focal release 9 2.1.5. Graphics Hardware Support 2.1.4. Multiple Processors 2.1.3.1. Other platforms 2.1.3. Platforms supported by Ubuntu/arm64