Google Axion: A New Era in Arm-based CPUs
Google Cloud continues to push the boundaries of computing by reimagining system design in close collaboration with service developers. This journey has been marked by remarkable achievements in custom silicon, such as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and the Video Coding Unit (VCU). The latest achievement in this line of innovation is the Google Axion Processors—the first custom Arm-based CPUs, specifically designed for data centers.
Unleashing Unmatched Performance and Energy Efficiency
Axion processors offer impressive improvements, delivering performance gains of up to 30% compared to the fastest Arm-based cloud instances for general purposes, delivering up to 50% improved performance than comparable x86-based systems. These advancements come with an impressive 60% improvement in energy efficiency, showcasing Google Cloud’s dedication to sustainable, high-performance infrastructure.
Titanium, the backbone of Axion, features specialized microcontrollers and tiered scale-out offloads that handle platform operations such as networking and security separately, ensuring maximum workload efficiency. In combination with Hyperdisk, a new block storage solution, users benefit from decoupled performance and real-time dynamic provisioning.
Through deep-rooted collaboration with Arm, Google Cloud builds on the Neoverse V2 CPU architecture, enabling extensive support for a wide range of general-purpose workloads, including data analytics and containerized microservices. This relationship is also bolstered by notable open-source contributions such as Android, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, and Go, all of which offer extensive support for the Arm architecture.
Google Cloud data centers are already 1.5X more efficient than the industry standard and deliver 3X more computing power while maintaining consistent electrical usage over the past five years. The Axion processors strengthen the mission to achieve 24/7 carbon-free energy for all operations and help customers meet sustainability targets more effectively.
Simplified Application Compatibility
Built on the Armv9 architecture, Axion ensures seamless integration with most cloud applications without substantial code rewrites, thanks to contributions such as the SystemReady Virtual Environment (VE) standard. This guarantees easy deployment of workloads, leveraging an ecosystem with thousands of Arm-compatible software solutions readily available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Axion processors will soon be accessible across key Google Cloud services such as Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Dataproc, Dataflow, and more, offering businesses enhanced performance and eco-friendly computing capabilities.