Benchmarks Of Google's Axion Arm-based CPU: Competitive Performance & Compelling Value

Written by Michael Larabel in Processors on 30 October 2024 at 12:00 PM EDT. Page 5 of 5. 7 Comments.
ASKAP benchmark with settings of Test: tConvolve MT, Gridding. C4A Axion was the fastest.
ASKAP benchmark with settings of Test: tConvolve MPI, Gridding. C4 Xeon Platinum EMR was the fastest.
ASKAP benchmark with settings of Test: tConvolve MPI, Degridding. C4A Axion was the fastest.
ASKAP benchmark with settings of Test: tConvolve OpenMP, Gridding. C4A Axion was the fastest.
ASKAP benchmark with settings of Test: tConvolve OpenMP, Degridding. C4A Axion was the fastest.
GROMACS benchmark with settings of Implementation: MPI CPU, Input: water_GMX50_bare. C4 Xeon Platinum EMR was the fastest.
GROMACS benchmark with settings of Implementation: MPI CPU, Input: water_GMX50_bare. C4 Xeon Platinum EMR was the fastest.
RocksDB benchmark with settings of Test: Random Read. C4A Axion was the fastest.
RocksDB benchmark with settings of Test: Read While Writing. C4A Axion was the fastest.

Across a variety of workloads tested, the C4A Axion instance was delivering very nice performance and value. It was all the more impressive considering this was Google's first in-house data center processor. Those wanting to go through all of my collected benchmarks can find the data via this OpenBenchmarking.org result page().

Geometric Mean Of All Test Results benchmark with settings of Result Composite, Google Axion C4A 48 vCPU vs. C4 Xeon vs. T2A Ampere Altra. C4A Axion was the fastest.

From all the benchmarks run, the C4A Axion 48 vCPU instance was delivering 1.4x the performance of the C4 instance type powered by Intel Xeon. Or compared to prior GCE Arm instances with the T2A powered by Ampere Altra, the Axion instance at the same vCPU size was providing 1.95x the performance. Not only was the Google Axion processors delivering great performance in Google Cloud but doing so with the best performance-per-dollar too.

Besides the strong CPU performance and great value for the C4A instances with the Google Compute Engine, Axion being based on Neoverse-V2 helps ensure robust software support at introduction compared to custom core designs. The major enterprise Linux distributions on GCE can all run with the Axion-based instances today as well as having compiler support for targeting the Neoverse-V2, etc.

Thanks to Google for allowing gratis access to the Google Axion C4A instances ahead of today's general availability launch. In the coming days I will have a few more benchmarks including a look at how Google Axion competes with AWS Graviton4.

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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.