Google's super powerful Arm-based CPU is now available — but this data center mystery chip will never go on sale, and Google won't say how many cores powers it

2 weeks ago

(Image credit: Google)

Google unveiled its Axion processors astatine Google Next '24, revealing custom Arm-based CPUs built connected Neoverse V2 architecture and designed to support a wide scope of information halfway workloads, including web servers, media processing, and AI applications.

Google's main unreality rivals, Amazon and Microsoft, already person their ain CPUs based connected Arm technology, but astatine launch, Google stated its chips would connection up to 30% amended capacity than existent Arm instances and up to 60% higher power ratio compared to akin x86-based options.

Fast guardant to now, and Google Cloud has begun offering C4A virtual machines powered by Axion processors. The instances are optimized for various general-purpose workloads, specified arsenic web and app servers, containerized microservices, databases, and AI inference.

The halfway count mystery

With its Titanium exertion - a strategy of civilization silicon microcontrollers and gradual scale-out offloads designed to optimize capacity for customer workloads - Google reports up to 65% amended price-performance and 60% greater power ratio than comparable x86-based VMs, on pinch 30% amended price-performance for MySQL and 35% for Redis workloads.

Although definite cardinal specifications of nan Axion processors stay unknown, specified arsenic halfway count, Google confirms nan chips person been designed exclusively for its information centers, pinch nary plans for commercialized sale. Google services - including Bigtable, Spanner, BigQuery, F1 Query, Blobstore, Pub/Sub, Google Earth Engine, and nan YouTube Ads level - person already begun deploying Axion-based servers.

"Spanner is 1 of nan astir captious and analyzable services astatine Google, powering products including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Ads," noted Andi Gutmans, VP/GM of Databases astatine Google. "In our first tests connected Axion processors, we've observed up to 60% amended query capacity per vCPU complete prior-generation servers. As we standard retired our footprint, we expect this to construe to a much unchangeable and responsive acquisition for our users, moreover nether nan astir demanding conditions."

C4A VMs are presently disposable successful Google Cloud regions crossed nan US, Europe, and Asia, pinch aggregate configuration options. By keeping Axion exclusive to its ain level and not bringing nan spot to nan unfastened market, Google intends to fortify its ain unreality ecosystem, appealing to enterprises looking for much powerful, energy-efficient options.

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Wayne Williams is simply a freelancer penning news for TechRadar Pro. He has been penning astir computers, technology, and nan web for 30 years. In that clip he wrote for astir of nan UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.

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