2026 06 What makes a good build server?

Hello Ampere Developers,

What do you look for in a build server?

One of the most common uses of Ampere servers is as build nodes for software being built, tested, and packaged for Arm64. What do you look for in a build server, and how can you tweak your server to make it faster?

That’s what we explore this month in a Tuning Guide on build server configuration: Optimizing Arm-based build servers with AmpereOne CPUs

Skipping straight to the recommendations, we come up with four things that are most important for efficient use of a build server:

  1. First, build servers can take advantage of more cores, by compiling different source files in parallel.

  2. Configuring your CPUs to run in “performance” mode with the p-governor can reduce the time spent in power management, which increased raw compilation speed by 17% on our reference workload

  3. By slowing down the heartbeat of the kernel, you can reduce kernel interrupts and context switches, which can increase performance by another few percentage points

  4. Finally, project builds typically include both serial steps like configuration and linking, and parallelizable steps. To keep your build server busy, you can send new build tasks to the server regularly – with parallelizable phases running at the same time as those that only keep one core busy, you improve the overall throughput of your build node.

Even more information on CI/CD on Ampere servers

To learn more about using Ampere servers as part of your build and test infrastructure, check out this great content on the Ampere Developer Center:

The Case for Ceph on Arm64, with IBM’s Federico Lucifredi

On July 1st 2026, at noon PDT/3pm EDT/9pm CEST, Federico Lucifredi, Product Management Director for the Ceph Platform at IBM and Red Hat, joins Ampere’s Dave Neary for a deep dive into Ceph’s move to bring commercial support to Ceph on Arm64. Ceph has been a powerhouse in the open-source storage world for years, and in the past 12 months there have been a number of key breakthroughs in commercial support of both the Ceph client libraries and Ceph clusters on Arm64. Federico and Dave will explore the journey to commercial support of Ceph on Arm64, and why Ceph users should consider running their next cluster on Arm64.

Register here to get a reminder to attend live, or to see the video on-demand after it happens: The Case for Ceph on Arm64, with IBM's Federico Lucifredi

Are you already on the Ampere Developer Community!

Do you have questions about using Ampere hardware as part of your CI/CD infrastructure? The Ampere Developer Community Forum is a great place to ask your questions! Join our community of experts to ask your questions, and to share your knowledge with others!

Join the conversation: https://community.amperecomputing.com

Happy coding and see you in the next edition!

The Ampere Developer Relations Team