Google unveils custom ARM-based chip ‘Axion’ as competition heats up

Google has a long history of designing silicon chips and deploying them at scale. So, what's next?

Introducing Google Cloud Axion—our new custom ArmⓇ-based CPU designed for the data center #GoogleCloudNext. pic.twitter.com/7eiXaPOh4P

— Google Cloud (@googlecloud) April 9, 2024

According to Google, the Axion chip offers 30 per cent better performance than the fastest general-purpose Arm-based virtual machines available in the cloud today, up to 50 per cent better performance, and up to 60 per cent better energy efficiency than comparable VMs based on x86 architecture.

It will support both Google’s internal workloads and general-purpose compute workloads such as web serving, data analytics, containerised workloads, and databases. Google, at the moment, is not disclosing details about the chip’s specifications. Google said its Axion chips are already powering the YouTube ads platform, Google Earth Engine, and other Google services including BigTable, Spanner, BigQuery, Blobstore, and Pub/Sub. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant plans to roll out the chip to business customers of Google Cloud “later this year.”

Google will deploy these chips at its data centre (Image credit: Google Cloud)

Google’s move to launch its own custom server processor shows how competitive the market is for cloud infrastructure, where most organizations rely on data centres and pay companies like Google and Amazon per usage. For Google, its cloud business, which is headed by Indian-American executive Thomas Kurian, now represents almost 11 per cent of the tech giant’s total revenue of $86 billion in Q4 2023. Google commands 7.5 per cent of the cloud infrastructure market in 2022, while Amazon and Microsoft together hold 62 per cent of the market, according to estimates from market research firm Gartner.

ARM-based CPUs are gaining traction in the cloud data centre market, with many players deploying their custom CPUs at scale. Amazon’s AWS announced its Graviton1 processor in 2018, Alibaba in 2021, and Microsoft announced its AI chip last year.

Google isn’t new to ARM designs. The company has been active in developing silicon designs for many years. Tensor, Google’s custom-designed ARM processor, already powers its Pixel smartphones. It is centred on the AI-boosting TPU that promises to improve images, videos, search, captioning, text-to-speech, and more. The company reportedly plans to move from Samsung’s modified chips currently used in Pixel devices and switch to a truly custom chip in 2025.