Oracle Still Embracing Ampere Despite Divestment

Oracle last week announced that it had divested from Ampere Computing. But while Big Red may no longer own part of the Arm CPU maker,it’s not ready to stop using the chips just yet.

On Monday, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the database giant’s cloud wing, announced the availability of its A4 Standard instances based on Ampere Computing’s ampereone M silicon in both virtualized and bare metal flavors.

The chips can be had with up to 192 custom Arm cores on the open market. Unlike Amazon’s Graviton or Microsoft’s Cobalt, these aren’t OCI exclusive.

For OCI, Oracle has opted for a 96-core version of the chip clocked at 3.6 GHz with 192 MB and 64 MB of L2 and L3 cache, respectively, and 12 channels of DDR5 5600MT/s memory.

Oracle’s New A4 Instances: A Performance Leap

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) just launched its A4 instances, powered by the latest generation of Ampere Altra max processors. These new instances promise significant performance gains for a wide range of workloads.

The A4 instances come in various configurations,offering up to 128 vCPUs and 2TB of DDR5 memory.This makes them ideal for demanding applications like in-memory databases, analytics, and high-performance computing.

Compared to its prior-gen A2 instances, which are based on Ampere’s older AmpereOne (non-M) chips, Oracle claims customers can expect up to 35 percent higher core-for-core performance, thanks in part to a 20 percent higher clock speed and the higher memory bandwidth afforded by the 12 channel controller.

With having mentioned that, Oracle’s A2 instances are still larger with up to 78 OCPUs (virtualized) and 946 GB of DDR5 memory.

OCI A4 instances are available now in several regions, including Ashburn, Frankfurt, and tokyo. Oracle is positioning these instances as a cost-effective alternative to other cloud providers, offering competitive pricing and performance.

Key benefits of the A4 instances include:

• Enhanced Performance: Up to 35% better core-for-core performance.
• Large Memory Capacity: Up to 2TB of DDR5 memory.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing compared to other cloud providers.
• Scalability: Easily scale your workloads up or down as needed.

These new instances represent a significant investment by Oracle in its cloud infrastructure and demonstrate its commitment to providing customers with high-performance, scalable, and cost-effective computing solutions.