Technology giant Oracle has announced its strategic decision to integrate Ampere Computing’s flagship processor chips into its cloud computing service, providing a significant boost to Ampere, a chip company currently in the process of preparing for an initial public offering (IPO).
Oracle said Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Compute A2 Instances powered by Ampere AmpereOne CPUs are expected to deliver leading price-performance and the highest available processor core count in the industry — 320 cores in the bare metal shape and up to 156 cores in the flexible VM shape — to power a variety of general-purpose cloud workloads including running web servers, transcoding video, and servicing CPU-based AI inference requests.
The high core count available in these instances can support increased levels of performance, virtual machine density, and scaling to help customers more efficiently manage their computing workloads while reducing data center footprint and power consumption.
These instances can also run flexible shapes for virtual machines to provide customers with granular options for the amount of processing power and memory to help maximize resource utilization and minimize costs while providing a simple and predictable pricing model. These instances are planned to be coming next year.
Ampere Computing, founded by former Intel executives, specializes in the design of chips tailored for data centers, utilizing technology from Arm Holdings. The production of these advanced chips is outsourced to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a global semiconductor manufacturing firm.
Ampere has made a conscious effort to develop chips that prioritize energy efficiency, setting them apart from traditional processors offered by industry giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). In response, both Intel and AMD have unveiled competitive offerings to challenge Ampere’s chip technology.
Notably, Oracle holds a substantial investment in Ampere and was an early adopter of Ampere’s chips in 2021, making them one of the first cloud companies to integrate these cutting-edge chips into their operations. Renee James, CEO of Ampere, also holds a position on Oracle’s board of directors, further solidifying the relationship between the two companies.
Ampere recently disclosed that Alphabet’s Google Cloud unit would also be incorporating its latest chips, showcasing a growing acceptance and adoption of Ampere’s chips in the cloud computing industry. These newest chips boast computing cores that have been custom-designed by Ampere, enhancing their performance and appeal to cloud service providers.
In the world of cloud computing, chips are a crucial component, and major players in the industry purchase them in large quantities to meet the demands of software developers. The integration of Ampere’s chips by Oracle and Google Cloud underscores the importance of energy-efficient and high-performance chips in powering the next generation of cloud services.
