Google Cloud Joins Other Big Tech, Use Arm For Computing Chip

Google Cloud now uses technology from Arm Ltd. (photo: doc. google cloud)

JAKARTA - Alphabet Inc's Google Cloud unit on Wednesday, July 13, announced that it will start adopting computing chips based on technology from Arm Ltd. This makes it the latest company to join a transition that will take market share from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Arm, has long supplied the designs and other intellectual property that powers the chips for smartphones and tablets. . In 2018, Arm began offering technology for chips used in data centers, a market that has been dominated by Intel and AMD.

In the four years since, Arm's technology, which is licensed to other companies to be woven into a complete chip, has emerged in data centers around the world, including at Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp in the United States and Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. Holdings Ltd in China.

These companies buy computing chips in bulk and then lease computing power to software developers through their paid cloud services.

They all still offer chip-based services from Intel and AMD. But with Google joining the ranks of cloud providers offering Arm-based chips, nearly every major provider now has at least some Arm-based offerings.

Some cloud computing companies such as Amazon and Alibaba are designing their own Arm-based chips and having them manufactured by chip manufacturers. Several others - including Google - turned to Ampere Computing, a chip company founded by former Intel executives who had filed classified documents with US securities regulators for an initial public offering.

Google said last Wednesday that its new offering would be based on Ampere's "Altra" chip. Ampere also sells chips to Microsoft and Oracle, among others.