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 power it

By James On Nov 5, 2024

Google unveiled its Axion processors at Google Next ’24, unveiling custom Arm-based CPUs built on the Neoverse V2 architecture and designed to support a wide range of data center workloads, including web servers, media processing and AI applications.

Google’s main cloud rivals, Amazon and Microsoft already have their own CPUs based on Arm technology, but at launch Google stated that the chips would offer up to 30% better performance than current Arm instances and up to 60% higher power efficiency compared to comparable x86-based options.

Fast forward to now, and Google Cloud has started offering C4A virtual machines powered by Axion processors. The instances are optimized for a variety of common workloads, such as web and app servers, containerized microservices, databases, and AI inference.

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With its Titanium technology – a system of custom silicon microcontrollers and layered scale-out offloads designed to optimize performance for customer workloads – Google reports up to 65% better value for money and 60% greater energy efficiency than comparable x86 -based VMs, along with 30% better price-performance ratio for MySQL and 35% for Redis workloads.

While certain key details of the Axion processors remain unknown, such as the number of cores, Google confirms that the chips are designed exclusively for its data centers, with no plans for commercial sales. Google services – including Bigtable, Spanner, BigQuery, F1 Query, Blobstore, Pub/Sub, Google Earth Engine and the YouTube Ads platform – have already started deploying Axion-based servers.

“Spanner is one of the most critical and complex services at Google, powering products like YouTube, Gmail and Google Ads,” said Andi Gutmans, VP/GM Databases at Google. “During our initial testing with Axion processors, we observed up to 60% better query performance per vCPU than previous generation servers. As we expand our footprint, we expect this will translate into a more stable and responsive experience for our users, even under the most demanding conditions.”

C4A VMs are currently available in Google Cloud regions in the US, Europe, and Asia, with multiple configuration options. By keeping Axion exclusive to its own platform and not bringing the chip to the open market, Google aims to strengthen its own cloud ecosystem and appeal to companies looking for more powerful, energy-efficient options.