OCI Ampere A1 Compute has been made available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle’s new Arm-based cloud computing service is powered by Ampere Computing’s data centre chips. (Credit: Oracle)
Oracle has introduced a cloud computing service powered by Ampere Computing’s data centre chips that are based on technology from British semiconductor firm Arm.
OCI Ampere A1 Compute, which is Oracle’s first Arm-based compute offering, has been made available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
According to the company, customers will get considerable price-performance benefits by running cloud-native and general-purpose workloads on Arm-based instances.
The Arm-optimised applications can be deployed by customers on bare metal servers, containers, and virtual machines (VM) in the Oracle public cloud or the company’s Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer.
The Arm-based compute instances are being offered by the company at one cent per core hour with VM sizing from 1 to 80 OCPUs and 1 to 64GB of memory per core or as a bare-metal service with 160 cores and 1TB of memory.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure executive vice president Clay Magouyrk said: “We see increasing demand for server-side Arm computing and adding Arm-based compute instances to our extensive portfolio of offerings enables customers to pick and choose the right processors for their workloads.
“Now customers who need an Arm platform for development can get the flexibility, scalability, and price-performance they need. We’re also making it really easy for developers to move their apps and develop new ones on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.”
Oracle said that it is investing in the Arm ecosystem to give an increased choice to developers in compute instances along with greater price-performance compared to other x86 instances on a per core basis.
Compared to x86 based systems, there was a 10% increase in performance when x264 video encoding workloads were run on OCI Ampere A1, claimed Oracle.
When it came to running NGINX reverse proxy workloads, OCI Ampere A1, which is powered by Ampere Altra processors, delivered a 46% increase in performance. Apart from that, it delivered a price-performance benefit of up to 62%, when compared to x86 based systems.
Currently, developers have three distinct offerings to avail to get started on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. These include Oracle Cloud Free Tier, Always Free Arm, and Arm Accelerator.
Ampere Computing founder, chairman, and CEO Renee James said: “Ampere instances on OCI is a breakthrough for developers. Oracle’s Free Tier is a great offering that allows them to test the OCI Ampere A1 compute platform and experience the first-cloud native processor that delivers predictable performance, scalability and power needed.
“The Oracle Cloud has all the tools developers need to try new technology, get excited about new platforms and develop new applications.”