Microsoft’s Arm-based Cobalt 100 CPU VMs go live in Azure • The Register

Microsoft’s Cobalt 100 Arm CPUs are generally available in the Azure cloud, creating another non-x86 option for running VMs in the Redmondian cloud.

The processors power three instance types: Dpsv6, Dplsv6 and Epsv6.

The first two instance types are intended for general data processing. The Dpsv6 instances offer VMs ranging from two virtual CPUs and 8GB of RAM at a list price of $51 per month to monsters with 96 vCPUs and 384GB of RAM that will set you back $2,460. Microsoft expects them to be suitable for web and application servers, small to medium databases, or running caches.

Observant readers may have noticed that the above VMs offer 4GB of memory per vCPU. The Dplsv6 instance type cuts this in half, and prices drop accordingly to $45 per month for the smallest machine and $2,172 for the 96-core beast. Redmond recommends these for operating microservices, small databases, caches and gaming servers.

The Epsv6 VMs offer 8 GB per vCPU. Prices increase to $67 per month for a pair of vCPUs and $3,230 for 96 vCPUs. This configuration makes them suitable for relational database servers, large databases, data analysis engines, and in-memory caches.

The above prices may decrease if you sign up for long-term use or accept the risk associated with using Spot Instances.

As our sister publication The next platform When Microsoft announced the Cobalt 100, it was noted that the chip was apparently based on the Neoverse Compute Subsystems N2 design, which was offered by Arm as a template for building processors, was built by TSMC on a five-nanometer process and has 128 cores – the result of combining two 64-core tiles. It’s unclear why Microsoft doesn’t offer a 128-core VM.

Microsoft, of course, publishes nice performance numbers: the Cobalt-based VMs are apparently up to 1.4 times faster “compared to previous generations of Azure Arm-based VMs,” and also up to 1.5 times faster when running Java workloads and perform twice as well when running web servers, .NET applications, and in-memory cache applications.

“These VMs also support 4x local storage IOPS (with NVMe) and up to 1.5x network bandwidth compared to previous generation Azure Arm-based VMs,” Microsoft’s launch post says.

There are two things to note here.

For one thing, all Cobalt-equipped instances use the same 3.4GHz processor and forego temporary memory. Microsoft of course allows users to add Azure storage, with several types to choose from. However, the software giant did not say which memory configuration delivered the performance measured above.

The other reason is that Microsoft hasn’t explained what it means by “earlier generations of Azure Arm-based VMs.” Microsoft’s latest attempt in this area is based on Ampere’s Altra processor.

Readers may recall that Oracle owns a third of Ampere and could take control of the chip designer in 2027. Maybe Microsoft wants to let us know that it’s surpassing Big Red’s tame chip designer without insulting it directly to its face.

The new VMs are “generally available” in the Azure countries Central Canada, Central US, East US 2, East US, Germany West Central, East Japan, Central Mexico, Northern Europe, Southeast Asia, Sweden Central, Switzerland-North, UAE-North and Western Europe, and regions West USA 2. They are “soon” also in the regions Australia East, Brazil South, France Central, India Central, South-Central USA, Great Britain South, West USA 3 and West USA available. “Soon” means in 2024. ®