Google Cloud Platform has finally announced its in-house-designed Arm-based CPU, Axion, following much anticipation in the industry. This move was expected given the trend of first-party chip design by major cloud service providers, with Microsoft and AWS having already launched their own CPUs in recent years. Google’s announcement comes after a strategic partnership with Ampere, signaling a shift towards embracing Arm-based CPUs in the data center market.
Arm-based CPUs have gained traction in the cloud data center since AWS introduced Graviton1-based instances in 2018. AWS has deployed over 2 million Arm chips, supporting thousands of customers across various instances. This success has paved the way for other CSPs like Azure and now Google Cloud to follow suit in adopting Arm-based technology for their data centers. As the market continues to shift towards Arm, the dominance of x86-based processors is gradually being challenged.
Google’s Axion CPU is built on Arm’s Neoverse V2 technology, featuring powerful cores, large cache, and memory bandwidth for enhanced performance. The CPU is designed to support a wide range of workloads, including Google internal operations and general-purpose compute instances on GCP. Google claims that Axion outperforms other Arm and x86 CPUs in terms of speed, performance, and efficiency, although specific details about the CPU’s architecture have not been disclosed.
Despite being a new player in the CPU design space, Google has a long history of silicon design and a strong relationship with Arm. The company’s experience with designing chips for various applications, including TPUs and VPUs, gives them a solid foundation for developing high-performance silicon like Axion. While enterprise adoption of Axion remains to be seen, Google’s track record in silicon design and collaboration with Arm engineers instills confidence in the CPU’s capabilities.
With Google now introducing its own in-house CPU, the future for Arm-silicon vendor Ampere Computing may be uncertain. While Ampere has partnerships with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, its opportunities with major hyperscalers might be limited. However, there is still potential for Ampere in second-tier and emerging cloud segments that seek the cost and power benefits of Arm-based technology without the resources to design their own chips.
Overall, the introduction of Axion by Google Cloud Platform marks a significant milestone in the evolution of cloud infrastructure. As more CSPs like Azure and GCP adopt Arm-based CPUs, the market share of Arm processors in the cloud is expected to grow rapidly. This shift towards Arm technology is expected to have a ripple effect on smaller cloud providers and eventually reach the enterprise market. The era of silicon in the cloud is far from boring, with innovations like Axion shaping the future of data center technology.
