Google announces Arm-based CPU 'Axion'



Google has announced Axion, a custom Arm-based CPU for data centers that will be available via Google Cloud in the second half of 2024.

Introducing Google's new Arm-based CPU | Google Cloud Blog

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/introducing-googles-new-arm-based-cpu

Google unveils Arm-based data center processor, new AI chip | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-unveils-arm-based-data-center-processor-new-ai-chip-2024-04-09/

Google's new Arm-based CPU will challenge Microsoft and Amazon in the AI race - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/9/24125074/google-axion-arm-cpu-ai-chips-cloud-server-data-center

Google unveiled Axion, an Arm-based data center chip, on April 9, 2024 at its cloud conference, Cloud Next, in Las Vegas.



Google has previously developed the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a machine learning specialized processor offered through Google Cloud, and Argos , a VCU (Video Coding Unit) optimized for processing YouTube videos. The newly announced Axion will also be provided to customers via Google Cloud, rather than distributing CPUs directly.

According to Google, Axion delivers up to 30% better performance than the fastest Arm-based instances currently available in the cloud, and is up to 50% more performant and up to 60% more energy efficient than current generation x86-based instances.

'Axion makes it easy for customers to migrate their existing workloads to Arm,' said Mark Romeyer, vice president and general manager of computing and machine learning infrastructure at Google Cloud. 'Axion is built on an open foundation, so customers who use Arm from a location-agnostic perspective can easily adopt Axion without having to rearchitect or rewrite their apps.'



As major IT companies compete for dominance in the AI market, the race to develop hardware to run AI is also heating up, with Microsoft and Amazon each launching Arm-based AI-specialized chips in November 2023, vying for the lead in this field from NVIDIA.

Meanwhile, Google, which competes with Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud, has made chips for YouTube, AI and smartphones, but has yet to build Arm-based CPUs for servers.

Google plans to use Axion to expand other Google services, including the Google Earth Engine and YouTube advertising platform, and expects to make Axion available to Google Cloud customers in the second half of 2024.

Arm CEO Rene Haas said, 'The announcement of Google's new CPU, Axion, marks an important milestone in delivering custom silicon optimized for Google's infrastructure and built on the high-performance Arm Neoverse V2 platform. Decades of investment in the ecosystem, combined with Google's continued innovation and contributions to open source software, will ensure the best experience for the most important workloads for customers running Arm everywhere.'

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