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Microsoft Unveils Azure Cobalt 100-Based Virtual Machines: Enhanced Performance and Sustainability
Microsoft's Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are now generally available. They deliver up to 50% improved price performance with energy-efficient Arm architecture. Tailored for diverse workloads, these VMs offer various configurations, including general-purpose and memory-optimized options. Their release supports sustainable computing, aligning with Microsoft's commitment to lower carbon footprints.
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General-Purpose and Compute-Intensive Amazon EC2 Graviton4 Instances Now Available
AWS has recently released the EC2 C8g and M8g instances, powered by the latest Graviton4 processors. The general-purpose M8g and compute-intensive C8g instances are designed to deliver up to 30% better performance compared to Graviton3-based instances, with a cost increase of approximately 10% over the previous M7g and C7g generations.
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Amazon EC2 R8g Instances with AWS Graviton4 Processors Generally Available
AWS has announced the general availability of Amazon EC2 R8g instances, which use AWS Graviton4 processors. These instances have been available in preview since November 2023 and are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data analytics.
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Microsoft Launches Preview of Arm-Based Azure VMs Featuring Cobalt 100 Processor
The new Cobalt 100 Arm-based virtual machine (VM), based on Microsoft’s custom silicon series announced in November 2023, is currently in preview.
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Axion Processor: Google Announces Its First Arm-Based CPU
During the recent Google Next '24 conference, Google unveiled Axion, its first custom Arm-based CPUs designed for data centers. Utilizing the Arm Neoverse V2 CPU architecture, the new processor will be available to customers later this year.
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AWS Unveils Fourth-Generation Graviton Processor with R8g EC2 Instances
During the recent re:Invent, AWS announced the preview of memory-optimized R8g instances powered by the fourth-generation Graviton processor. The new instances are designed for memory-intensive workloads, including databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data analytics.
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Microsoft Debuts Custom Chips for Cloud and AI: Azure Maia AI Accelerator and Azure Cobalt CPU
During the recent Ignite conference, Microsoft introduced two custom-designed chips for their cloud infrastructure: Microsoft Azure Maia AI Accelerator (Athena), optimized for artificial intelligence (AI) tasks and generative AI, and Microsoft Azure Cobalt CPU, an Arm-based processor tailored to run general-purpose compute workloads on the Microsoft Cloud.
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First Amazon EC2 Instances with Graviton3E Processors Now GA
AWS has recently announced the general availability of the C7gn and the Hpc7g instances, both using the new Graviton3E processors. The C7gn instances are designed for network-intensive workloads while the Hpc7g instances are tailored for high-performance computing ones.
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Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm-Based Processors Now Generally Available
Microsoft recently announced the general availability (GA) of virtual machines (VMs) on Azure featuring the Ampere Altra, a processor based on the Arm architecture. In addition, the Arm-based virtual machines can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
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Google Expands the Tau VM Family with Arm-Based Processors
Recently, Google announced its Cloud Virtual Machines (VMs) based on the Arm architecture of Compute Engine called Tau T2A. These VMs are the latest addition to the Tau VM family that offers VMs optimized for cost-effective performance for scale-out workloads and are available in preview.
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Amazon Announces General Availability of EC2 M1 Mac Instances to Build and Test on macOS
AWS recently announced the general availability of the EC2 M1 Mac instances based on the Apple ARM-based processor and designed for CI/CD of Apple-based applications. The M1 Mac option is faster and cheaper than the existing x86-based Mac version but still requires a minimum 24 hours commitment.
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New PACMAN Vulnerability Affecting Apple Silicon CPUs
Uncovered by a team at MIT CSAIL, PACMAN is a new vulnerability affecting a defense mechanism available in Apple Silicon processors and known as pointer authentication code (PAC). While Apple downplayed the severity of this finding, the researchers hint at the fact that PACMAN brings an entire new class of attacks.
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AWS Releases First Graviton3 Instances
AWS has recently announced the general availability of the C7g instances, the first EC2 instances running Graviton3 processors. Designed for compute-intensive workloads, they provide always-on memory encryption, dedicated caches for every vCPU, and support for pointer authentication.
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Hardware Mitigation on Intel, Arm, and AMD CPUs Shown Ineffective against Spectre v2
Security researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam showed the hardware mitigations to Spectre v2 attacks implemented in both Intel and Arm processors have fundamental flaws that make them vulnerable to branch history injection.
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Amazon Introduces New EC2 Families G5g, M6a, Im4gn and Is4gen
At the recent re:Invent conference, Amazon introduced new EC2 instance families running on different processors, including G5g Arm-based instances, M6a AMD-based ones and storage-optimized Im4gn and Is4gen.