Comment by yyyk
Their servers are so old, even an entirely different architecture emulating x86_64 would still see a performance increase... So there's no OSS argument here - they could even buy a Talos, have no closed firmware, and still see a performance increase with emulation. If they don't care about the firmware, there are plenty of very cheap x86 options which are still more modern.
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/593#note_2690000843
> For all those following this, we have the budget to buy new hardware, what we lack is a skilled hoster who has committed to physically hosting a new bare metal box for us.