To bring up Windows 8 on these new SoCs that did not yet have a graphics driver, [...] our graphics team wrote a soft GPU driver that was capable of working directly against the hardware frame buffer. Aside from enabling development, it also enabled us to reimagine other things in Windows [...]. For example, when running Windows Setup, or in those rare cases when Windows has a "bluescreen," we were able to give it a friendlier look and even localize it, so that even bad news can be presented more nicely across all platforms.
I thought the new BSOD was a product of the UEFI transition, but turns out it's because of the ARM work.