Google just unveiled a new weapon against Microsoft and Amazon in the AI arms race

• Google announced the development of its own Arm-based CPU processor Axion.
• The move gives Google an edge in its competition with Amazon and Microsoft in the AI cloud race.
• Google said Axion will deliver better performance and energy efficiency than prior chips.

Google has a new edge against competitors like Amazon and Microsoft: it's partnering with Arm to make more of its own chips.

Google announced its new CPU, called Axion, on Tuesday. It's following Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in creating custom Arm-based processors.

The move is another step forward in Google's development of new computing resources. Axion will be available for Cloud services later this year. Google said Axion will improve performance for "general-purpose workloads," like open-source databases, web and app servers, in-memory caches, data analytics engines, media processing, and AI training.

Google said the new Axion chips will deliver 30% better performance than the current fastest general-purpose Arm-based chips in the cloud. It will also improve performance by 50% and energy efficiency by 60%.

CPUs — or central processing units — like Axion are crucial to the AI arms race. Training complex AI models involves processing large data sets, which CPUs help run more quickly.

The computing power needed to train AI models is increasingly important. Major tech companies are in a race to scale up in AI, and Google is among them. It has been developing AI for over a decade, incorporating it into its search engine, ad products, and YouTube recommendations. But its AI chatbot Gemini has trailed behind OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Google's decision to make its own AI chips may create competition with partners like Nvidia and Intel as it leans away from using outside vendors. It could, however, save Google some money — buying AI chips is notoriously costly. For example, Nvidia's Blackwell chip is estimated to cost between $30,000 and $40,000.

The announcement "marks a significant milestone in delivering custom silicon that is optimized for Google's infrastructure," Arm's CEO Rene Haas said in a statement.

In addition to the Arm-based CPU, Google also announced the general availability of TPU v5p, which it says is its most powerful and scalable flexible AI accelerator.

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