Oracle Announces New AmpereOne Processor and Next-Gen A2 Compute
September 20, 2023
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Oracle Cloud World is this week in Las Vegas, and the news is coming fast and thick. Oracle announced that several new customers, including real-time video service companies 8x8 and Phenix and AI startup Wallaroo, are migrating to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Ampere.
Oracle also announced its next generation Ampere A2 Compute Instances based on the newest version of the AmpereOne processor will be available this year. According to the release, the new instances are designed for AI inference, databases, web services, media transcoding workloads, and run-time language support, including GO and Java.
“The announcement of our next generation of compute instances, powered by AmpereOne processors, marks a key milestone as OCI expands our foundational usage of Ampere processors,” Clay Magouyrk, EVP, Cloud Infrastructure Development, Oracle, said in the release. “This next generation compute instance will provide unmatched core density, which is critical in delivering to the performance and sustainability needs of our customers.”
Ampere CEO Renee James thinks this customer momentum on OCI was indicative of an important shift happening in the market.
“What’s happening with OCI and Ampere is a reflection of a significant shift happening in our industry,” said James. “The days of using power as a proxy for performance is transitioning to the era of high performance and low power computing. In this era of AI compute, less power is the new power.”
Magouyrk and James said the breadth of services and applications are now running on Ampere processors within Oracle. Oracle Database has been enabled on Ampere CPU, and Oracle is providing customers around the world the option to choose Ampere for both performance and efficiency.
“Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications… are now seamlessly running on Ampere processors within OCI, delivering on our performance and sustainability goals,” Magouyrk said.
What’s more, the company said that all OCI services are now running on Ampere processors, which helps end users migrate their workloads to the Ampere platform. Those can include AI Inferencing workloads enabled by Ampere’s AI Optimizer software libraries. The release noted that the customers already in the ecosystem report easy adoption and better price-performance.
Reportedly, 8x8 said it was able to migrate and port services to OCI and Ampere within a matter of weeks, and Phenix said migrating to Ampere allowed it to upgrade and modernize software and expand services.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
