Optimizing Cloud-Native Observability: A Deep Dive into OpenTelemetry on Arm64 with Ampere

This article explores the strategic collaboration between OpenTelemetry and Ampere, a partnership designed to fortify code integrity and unlock significant performance gains for OpenTelemetry on Arm64. We will delve into the technical challenges, the implementation of cross-architecture testing, and the measurable cost and energy savings that now define a new best-practice model for cloud-native observability on emerging architectures.

The Imperative for Arm64 in Modern Cloud-Native Environments

The landscape of cloud computing is undergoing a significant architectural shift. For years, the x86_64 architecture has been the undisputed standard for data centers and cloud infrastructure. However, the rise of scalable, microservices-based applications has created a demand for compute platforms that prioritize performance-per-watt, core density, and energy efficiency. This is where the Arm64 architecture has emerged as a powerful and compelling alternative.

Major cloud service providers have embraced this trend, with offerings like AWS Graviton and Google Cloud’s T2A instances demonstrating the growing market demand for Arm64-based virtual machines. As documented by the Ampere Community Blog, adoption for these services has been growing annually in double digits. This migration is driven by a simple value proposition: Arm64 processors, such as those in the Ampere® Altra® family, are designed for the highly parallelized, scale-out workloads that define the cloud-native era.

However, this architectural evolution presents a critical challenge for the open-source ecosystem. Foundational projects like OpenTelemetry, a leading observability framework under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), must ensure seamless compatibility and performance parity across all relevant architectures to maintain their ubiquity. Without this, organizations cannot confidently migrate workloads without compromising their ability to monitor, trace, and debug them.

A Strategic Partnership: How OpenTelemetry and Ampere Tackled Arm64 Integration

Recognizing this challenge, OpenTelemetry and Ampere initiated a strategic collaboration to proactively address the unique verification and integration hurdles associated with the Arm64 architecture. The goal was to ensure that OpenTelemetry not only runs on Arm64-based processors like Ampere Altra but is fully optimized to leverage their inherent advantages.

The core of the initiative was to treat Arm64 as a first-class citizen alongside x86_64, a move essential for building trust and encouraging wider adoption. As detailed in a developer story from Ampere, the collaboration went beyond simple porting; it was a deep-dive into the codebase to ensure robust, reliable, and performant operation.

“Arm64-based servers, including the Ampere® Altra® family of processors, offer performance improvements and energy savings. But the underlying architecture’s uniqueness also meant OpenTelemetry needed extra testing and validation.”

The Core Challenge: Ensuring Code Integrity and Reliability

The primary technical hurdle was not in compiling the code but in guaranteeing its integrity and consistent behavior. Different processor architectures can expose subtle, hard-to-find bugs related to memory models, instruction sets, or compiler optimizations. A feature that works perfectly on x86_64 could fail silently or produce incorrect data on Arm64 without rigorous, architecture-specific testing. This partnership was formed to build a framework capable of catching and resolving these issues systematically.

Building a Bulletproof Foundation: The Role of Cross-Architecture Testing

The most significant technical outcome of the OpenTelemetry-Ampere collaboration was the development and standardization of a robust, automated cross-architecture testing pipeline. This ensured that every code change submitted to the OpenTelemetry project would be automatically verified on both x86_64 and Arm64 hardware, providing immediate feedback on cross-platform compatibility.

This initiative directly fortified OpenTelemetry’s code integrity. By expanding the test matrix, developers could identify and fix architecture-specific bugs in core components, such as the OpenTelemetry Collector and its exporters, far more efficiently. This proactive approach prevents regressions and ensures that the framework remains stable for all users, regardless of their underlying infrastructure.

The CI/CD Pipeline Transformation

Integrating native Arm64 hardware directly into the project’s Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines was a critical step. This move from emulated environments to real-world hardware provided by Ampere enabled the detection of performance anomalies and compatibility issues that would otherwise go unnoticed until a production deployment. A typical CI pipeline configuration might now include a matrix build step to execute tests on different architectures, which could be represented conceptually in a configuration file:

jobs:
  build_and_test:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        architecture: [amd64, arm64]
        go-version: [1.21.x, 1.22.x]
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest-${{ matrix.architecture }}
    steps:
    - name: Run unit and integration tests
      run: make test

This automated validation provides an essential safety net. A quote from an OpenTelemetry engineering lead, summarized by SitePoint, highlights the impact:

“We identified and fixed architecture-specific bugs in our collector and exporters much faster after expanding our test matrix to include Arm64—this has improved reliability for everyone.”

This statement underscores a key point: enhancing support for one architecture ultimately strengthens the project for all users by enforcing stricter code quality and compatibility standards.

The Tangible Benefits of Optimizing OpenTelemetry on Arm64

The efforts to ensure robust support for OpenTelemetry on Arm64 yielded immediate and measurable benefits in three key areas: cost, performance, and sustainability. These outcomes provide a compelling business case for organizations considering a migration to Arm64 for their observability and other cloud-native workloads.

Unlocking Significant Infrastructure Cost Savings

One of the most impressive results from this initiative was a significant reduction in operational costs. According to the official Ampere report, the OpenTelemetry project realized an approximate 15% reduction in infrastructure costs for its workloads by running them on Ampere-based Arm64 servers compared to traditional x86 platforms. This cost saving is a direct result of the Arm64 architecture’s superior performance-per-dollar and higher core density, which allow organizations to achieve the same or better performance with fewer or smaller virtual machine instances.

Boosting Performance and Energy Efficiency

Beyond cost, the collaboration delivered marked improvements in performance and energy efficiency. The Arm64 architecture, particularly with cloud-native designs like the Ampere Altra processor, is engineered for high-throughput, parallelized tasks common in telemetry data processing. This results in lower latency and higher reliability for observability pipelines.

Equally important are the environmental benefits. The same reports highlight that Arm64 servers can achieve up to 30% lower energy consumption compared to equivalent x86_64 deployments. This aligns directly with the growing trend of green computing and corporate sustainability initiatives, allowing companies to reduce their carbon footprint without sacrificing performance.

Real-World Impact: Use Cases and Ecosystem Growth

The technical achievements of this partnership have translated into tangible, real-world impact, creating a proven pathway for organizations to adopt Arm64 with confidence. This work not only benefits OpenTelemetry users but also contributes to the maturity of the entire cloud-native ecosystem.

A Blueprint for Cloud Service Providers and Enterprises

A prime use case involves a cloud service provider that migrated a significant portion of its telemetry ingestion and processing workloads to Arm64. By deploying the newly-validated OpenTelemetry Collector on Ampere Altra instances, the provider was able to leverage the full benefits of the architecture. The results were twofold: a direct reduction in operational expenditures due to the 15% cost savings and a measurable decrease in energy consumption, contributing positively to their environmental goals.

This case study serves as a powerful blueprint for other enterprises looking to optimize their observability stack. It demonstrates that the transition to Arm64 is not only feasible but also financially and environmentally advantageous when supported by a robust, cross-platform observability framework like OpenTelemetry.

Advancing CNCF Standards and Fostering Adoption

The contributions made during this collaboration have had a ripple effect across the CNCF landscape. By establishing a high standard for Arm64 support and testing, the project advances the broader CNCF goal of achieving true platform parity between Arm64 and x86_64 architectures. As described by author Scott M. Fulton, III, whose work documented this story, demonstrating this level of code portability and observability parity is critical for encouraging wider ecosystem adoption.

Ampere’s direct involvement has sent a strong signal to the community: the Arm64 architecture is a mature, enterprise-ready platform for demanding cloud-native workloads. This has helped build momentum and confidence among developers and infrastructure teams, further accelerating the adoption of Arm64 across the industry.

A Model for the Future: Best Practices for Open-Source on Emerging Architectures

The collaboration between OpenTelemetry and Ampere stands as a best-practice model for how open-source projects can and should adapt to emerging compute architectures. It moves beyond reactive porting and embraces a proactive, deeply integrated approach to ensure long-term stability and relevance. Key takeaways from this initiative include:

• Proactive Collaboration: Engaging directly with hardware vendors like Ampere provides invaluable access to hardware, expertise, and engineering resources.
• Early and Integrated Testing: Embedding new architectures into core CI/CD pipelines from the start is non-negotiable for preventing regressions and ensuring quality.
• Standardizing Cross-Architecture Validation: A formal, automated process for testing across all supported platforms benefits the entire user base by enforcing higher standards of code integrity.
• Focusing on Parity: Striving for feature and performance parity ensures that users can choose the best architecture for their workload without compromising on essential tooling.

By following this model, other open-source projects can fortify their cross-platform stability, reduce maintenance overhead, and better serve a community that increasingly operates in a multi-architecture world.

The successful integration of OpenTelemetry on Arm64, driven by its collaboration with Ampere, delivers more than just performance gains. It establishes a powerful blueprint for open-source projects, proving that proactive cross-platform validation leads to enhanced reliability, substantial cost savings, and a more sustainable cloud. Explore deploying your observability workloads on Ampere Altra to harness these benefits and share your experience with the community.