The new VMs with the Intel processors are claimed to operate at 2.6GHz base frequency and 3.4GHz sustained all core turbo
Google Cloud’s N2 VMs to use the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel has announced a collaboration with Google Cloud under which it will power the latter’s Compute Engine N2 virtual machines (VMs) with its 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
The new VMs with Intel Xeon Scalable Processors are said to operate at 2.6GHz base frequency and 3.4GHz sustained all core turbo. They are claimed to deliver 30% better price-performance for a wide range of workloads, when compared to similarly-sized VMs that run on 2nd Generation Intel Xeon processors.
According to Google Cloud and Intel, N2 VMs provide flexible sizing with balanced performance and cost savings for web and app serving, medium-to-large databases, enterprise applications, media transcoding streaming, caching, gaming servers, and other workloads.
The latest Google Cloud N2 machine family is said to leverage various artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto acceleration engines used in 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors for increasing the overall performance. These include Intel Crypto Acceleration engines, Intel Deep Learning Boost (Intel DL Boost), and Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512).
Intel Crypto Acceleration engines are designed to improve data protection and privacy by boosting the performance of encryption-intensive workloads.
Intel DL Boost is said to offer flexibility to run complex AI workloads on the central processing unit. The engine helps in improving inference performance by maximising the use of compute resources, enhancing cache utilisation, and reducing potential bottlenecks in bandwidth.
On the other hand, Intel AVX-512 is claimed to improve performance and throughput for highly demanding computational tasks in applications.
Intel had previously stated that the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor can deliver up to 53% higher performance across various high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. This is in comparison to its previous generation processor.
Google Cloud, in a blog, stated that the N2 VMs with 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors will be available in early Q4 2021 for preview in the central US, western Europe, and Southeast Asian regions.
The Google unit stated: “Availability in additional Google Cloud regions, in line with current N2 machine family regions, is planned in the coming months.”