eBPF powers modern observability, but its behavior varies significantly across architectures. This talk examines whether eBPF can be used reliably on RISC-class systems—ARM64 and RISC-V—and what limitations appear in real workloads.

We use reproducible test environments to run tracing, profiling, and networking eBPF tools on x86_64, ARM64, and RISC-V, revealing practical differences in verifier constraints, helper availability, JIT maturity, and performance overhead. RISC-V support exists but remains incomplete, and we show exactly which features succeed, fail, or behave unpredictably.

Using a database benchmark as a workload generator, we compare instrumentation accuracy, latency impact, and stability across architectures. Attendees gain a clear understanding of eBPF’s practical portability and how to build a realistic multi-architecture observability testbed.