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Does anyone know if/when ARM is coming to GCP? Seems like a no-brainer for many use cases and our company would love to move, but we don't have the resources to

Does anyone know if/when ARM is coming to GCP? Seems like a no-brainer for many use cases and our company would love to move, but we don't have the resources to manage multiple clouds for now.

legoogyawaworht 6y ago
As of around 2020H2 Google had nothing in the works for their own main CPU hardware. The ASIC engineers there are mostly focused on proprietary ML hardware like dragonfish, positron etc that have more comparative advantage to do in-house.
tyingq 6y ago
Since Google doesn't appear to be working on anything like Graviton, they would have to use a smaller player like Ampere or Nuvia. Marvell says they are out of the general purpose market, and will only work in partnerships for custom chips. Maybe the M1 success will cause some players to re-think things, but for now, there doesn't seem to be an easier path for competitive high-end ARM servers apart from what Amazon is doing.
- gigatexal 6y ago
  Nuvia, at least according to Ben Thompson of Stratechery, is not going to making server chips. I guess that’s not to say they can’t given a big enough order but it is his belief that Qualcomm bought them to focus on consumer devices and things.
deadmutex 6y ago
You could try N2D (Which is AMD): https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-the-n2d-vm-family-based-on-amd https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-th... . The benefit of N2D is that it's still x86, so your existing binaries should work. Disclosure: I work at Google.
Twirrim 6y ago
Can't speak to GCP. I work at Oracle on OCI, their cloud platform. ARM is on its way, based on Ampere Altra chips, which are looking really competitive. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-altra-graviton2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-a... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-altra-q80&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-a... I'm genuinely excited to get my hands on these systems, and see how well they can do. There has been so many promises of a future based on ARM powered servers, and claims about their advantages, and it finally seems like it's within reach from a performance perspective. Whether they'll meet the other expectations, I couldn't guess, but this surely has to be concerning for Intel.

Does anyone know if/when ARM is coming to GCP? Seems like a no-brainer for many use cases and our company would love to move, but we don't have the resources to manage multiple clouds for now.

legoogyawaworht 6y ago

As of around 2020H2 Google had nothing in the works for their own main CPU hardware. The ASIC engineers there are mostly focused on proprietary ML hardware like dragonfish, positron etc that have more comparative advantage to do in-house.

tyingq 6y ago

Since Google doesn't appear to be working on anything like Graviton, they would have to use a smaller player like Ampere or Nuvia. Marvell says they are out of the general purpose market, and will only work in partnerships for custom chips. Maybe the M1 success will cause some players to re-think things, but for now, there doesn't seem to be an easier path for competitive high-end ARM servers apart from what Amazon is doing.

gigatexal 6y ago
Nuvia, at least according to Ben Thompson of Stratechery, is not going to making server chips. I guess that’s not to say they can’t given a big enough order but it is his belief that Qualcomm bought them to focus on consumer devices and things.

deadmutex 6y ago

You could try N2D (Which is AMD): https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-the-n2d-vm-family-based-on-amd https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-th... . The benefit of N2D is that it's still x86, so your existing binaries should work. Disclosure: I work at Google.

Twirrim 6y ago

Can't speak to GCP. I work at Oracle on OCI, their cloud platform. ARM is on its way, based on Ampere Altra chips, which are looking really competitive. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-altra-graviton2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-a... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-altra-q80&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-a... I'm genuinely excited to get my hands on these systems, and see how well they can do. There has been so many promises of a future based on ARM powered servers, and claims about their advantages, and it finally seems like it's within reach from a performance perspective. Whether they'll meet the other expectations, I couldn't guess, but this surely has to be concerning for Intel.