The RISC architecture frontier: Is eBPF ready for ARM64 and RISC-V?

eBPF's architecture-agnostic promise faces real-world challenges on non-x86 platforms. While ARM64 has achieved production parity thanks to cloud adoption, RISC-V remains a frontier with immature JIT compilers, incomplete kernel helper support, and testing gaps. The eBPF Foundation is standardizing the instruction set (RFC 9669) and funding RISC-V development, but organizations should treat RISC-V deployments as learning sandboxes rather than production-ready. Key bottlenecks include JIT optimization differences, memory model variations, and reliance on emulator testing rather than physical hardware validation.