Amazon Web Services Introduces Its Own Custom-Designed ARM Server Processor, Promises 45 Percent Lower Costs for Some Workloads

Tom Krazit, reporting for GeekWire from Amazon’s AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas:

After years of waiting for someone to design an ARM server processor that could work at scale on the cloud, Amazon Web Services just went ahead and designed its own.

Vice president of infrastructure Peter DeSantis introduced the AWS Graviton Processor Monday night, adding a third chip option for cloud customers alongside instances that use processors from Intel and AMD. The company did not provide a lot of details about the processor itself, but DeSantis said that it was designed for scale-out workloads that benefit from a lot of servers chipping away at a problem.

Makes you wonder what the hell is going on at Intel and AMD — first they missed out on mobile, now they’re missing out on the cloud’s move to power-efficient ARM chips.

Tangentially related: Microsoft Windows now supports 64-bit ARM.

★ Tuesday, 27 November 2018