Google is developing a custom-built Arm-based server chip to make cloud computing more affordable. This was announced at the Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas with an expected availability in 2024.
This move aligns Google with rivals like Amazon and Microsoft, who have adopted similar strategies. Google plans to run YouTube ad workloads on the Axion Arm chips once available, with customers such as Snap expressing interest.
Despite Alphabet, Google's parent company, still earning three-quarters of its revenue from advertising, cloud is growing faster and now represents almost 11% of company revenue. Amazon Web Services introduced its Graviton Arm chip in 2018, Alibaba announced Arm processors in 2021, and Microsoft followed suit in November.
Google has previously used Arm-based server computers for internal purposes and plans to transition these to the cloud-based Arm instances, named Axion, when they become available. Companies including Datadog, Elastic, OpenX, and Snap plan to adopt Axion.
The use of Arm-based chips could potentially lead to lower carbon emissions and increased energy efficiency. Google claims Axion offers 30% better performance than the fastest general-purpose Arm-based virtual machines in the cloud and 50% better performance than comparable VMs based on x86.
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