In a move to challenge the dominance of cloud computing giants like Amazon and Microsoft, Google has announced the development of a custom-built Arm-based server chip.
The new processor, set to be available later in 2024, is part of the tech giant’s strategy to make cloud computing more affordable for businesses.
“Google is trying to make cloud computing more affordable with a custom-built Arm-based server chip,” the company stated during its Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Playing Catch-Up
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has long been known for its dominance in the advertising industry, with three-quarters of its revenue still coming from this sector.
However, the cloud computing segment has been growing at a rapid pace, now representing almost 11% of the company’s revenue.
The move to develop an Arm-based chip is Google’s attempt to catch up with its rivals, who have already been employing a similar strategy for years. “Google is playing catch-up with rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft, which have been employing a similar strategy for years,” the article notes.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced its Graviton Arm chip in 2018, and “almost all their services are already ported and optimized on the Arm ecosystem,” according to Chirag Dekate, an analyst at technology industry researcher Gartner.
Alibaba and Microsoft have also announced their own Arm-based processors in recent years.
Improving Performance and Efficiency
The new Arm-based chip, named Axion, is expected to offer several advantages over traditional x86 processors. Google claims that Axion will deliver 30% better performance than the fastest general-purpose Arm-based virtual machines in the cloud and 50% better performance than comparable VMs based on x86.
Additionally, the Axion chips are said to provide a 60% increase in energy efficiency compared to comparable VMs based on the x86 model. “Virtual slices of physical servers containing the Axion chips deliver 60% more energy efficiency than comparable VMs based on the x86 model,” Google cloud chief Thomas Kurian wrote in a blog post.
Also Read: x86 vs. x64 vs. ARM: What’s the difference?
ARM processors are generally more energy efficient than x86 due to their design philosophy. ARM uses a simpler instruction set (RISC) compared to x86 (CISC). This means ARM instructions take less power to decode and execute.
If you’d like to read more about the differences between ARM and x86, have a look at our detailed article highlighting the differences.
Google has already started using Arm-based server computers for internal purposes, such as running YouTube advertising, the BigTable and Spanner databases, and the BigQuery data analytics tool.
The company plans to gradually move these workloads to the cloud-based Axion instances when they become available.
Furthermore, the spokesperson for Google stated that Datadog, Elastic, OpenX, and Snap have already expressed interest in adopting the Axion platform, indicating potential widespread adoption among cloud customers.
The broader use of Arm-based chips in the cloud computing industry could lead to lower carbon emissions for certain workloads, as the Arm architecture is more energy-efficient than the traditional x86 model.
“Arm chips, which are popular in smartphones, offer a shorter set of instructions than x86 chips, which are commonly found in PCs,” the article explains, “leading to improved energy efficiency and potentially reduced carbon emissions.”
Disrupting the Cloud Infrastructure Market
Google’s announcement of the Arm-based Axion chip represents a significant move in the highly competitive cloud computing market.
By offering a more affordable and efficient alternative to the dominant x86-based solutions, the tech giant aims to disrupt the existing landscape and gain a larger share of the rapidly growing cloud infrastructure segment.
“I think it completes their portfolio,” Dekate said, highlighting the importance of Google’s Arm-based chip in the company’s overall cloud computing strategy.
As the cloud computing industry continues to evolve, the introduction of Google’s Axion chip is poised to shake up the market and potentially change the way businesses approach their cloud infrastructure needs.
