GitHub has added Arm-based Linux and Windows runners for GitHub Actions. The developers say the addition provides power, performance and sustainability improvements for all your GitHub Actions jobs.

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that lets developers automate their build, test, and deployment pipeline. Users can create workflows that build and test every pull request to a repository, or deploy merged pull requests to production.

The addition means developers can use Arm-based hardware hosted by GitHub to build and deploy programs anywhere Arm architecture is used. An added attraction is that the Arm runners are priced at 37% less than GitHub's x64 Linux and Windows runners.

Runners are the machines that execute jobs in a GitHub Actions workflow, such as cloning your repository locally, installing testing software, and then running commands that evaluate your code.

Each GitHub-hosted runner is a new virtual machine (VM) hosted by GitHub with the runner application and other tools preinstalled, and machine maintenance and upgrades are managed by GitHub.

Developers on the GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud plan can provision runners with more cores, or a runner that's powered by a GPU or ARM processor.

The new Arm-powered runners are fully managed by GitHub with an image built by Arm containing all the tools needed for developers to get started. GitHub has partnered with Arm to provide the Ubuntu and Windows VM images for these runners. The Ubuntu 22.04 image is equipped with a full set of tools, and GitHub plans to add developer tools to the Windows image and a new Ubuntu 24.04 image.

GitHub says the runners offer:

"a power-efficient compute layer that can increase price-to-performance ratios, allowing customers to optimize compute costs to get more done within existing budgets while also reducing their carbon footprint."

Until now, developers wanting to use Arm hardware within GitHub have had to self-host or utilize QEMU virtualization which is slower than running natively.

GitHub Arm-hosted runners are available now on GitHub.

More Information

GitHub Website

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