The ARCS series of conferences has over 30 years of tradition in reporting topnotch results in computer architecture and operating systems research. It is organizedby the special interest group on “Computer and System Architecture” of GI(Gesellschaft f¨ur Informatik e.V.) and ITG (Informationstechnische Gesellschaftim VDE - Information Technology Society).In 2008, ARCS was hosted by the Technical University of Dresden, which hasone of the leading information technology schools in Europe. This year’s specialfocus was on adaptivity and adaptive system architectures. A wide spectrum wascovered from pre-fabrication adaptation of architectural templates to dynamicrun-time adaptation of deployed systems. Like the previous conferences in thisseries, this year’s event constituted an important forum for the presentation ofcomputer architecture research.