Oracle has announced their next generation Ampere A2 Compute Instances based on the latest AmpereOne processor, with availability starting later this year. According to Oracle, the new instances will deliver up to 44% more price-performance compared to x86 offerings and are ideal for AI inference, databases, web services, media transcoding workloads and run-time language support, such as GO and Java.

In related news, several new customers including industry leading real-time video service companies 8x8 and Phenix, along with AI startups like Wallaroo, said they are migrating to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Ampere as more and more companies seek to maximize price, performance and energy efficiency.OCI services running on Ampere are leading the way for end customers to easily migrate their workloads to the Ampere platform.

"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," said Clay Magouyrk, EVP of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Development. "This next generation compute instance will provide unmatched core density, which is critical in delivering to the performance and sustainability needs of our customers," Magouyrk said.

Ampere CEO Renee James said 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," James said. "The days of using power as a proxy for performance is transitioning to the era of high performance and low power computing. Customers like 8X8 and others recognize there is a pressing need to reduce their infrastructure costs, and at the same time, reduce their carbon footprint without sacrificing any performance. In this era of AI compute, less power is the new power."

"Oracle Cloud is growing rapidly, which has pushed us up to the limits of available power. Therefore, we need efficiency in addition to performance to continue to scale our cloud," Magouyrk said. "That's why we are using Ampere for everything from the Oracle Database to Fusion Apps, and now, all of our OCI services. With the growth of AI processing, this shift in computing has become even more of an imperative. Ampere is OCI's solution to a sustainable cloud."

Magouyrk and James said the breadth of services and applications are now running on Ampere processors within Oracle.

"Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications deliver the most complete suite of applications to the most complicated industries in the world. These applications are now seamlessly running on Ampere processors within OCI, delivering on our performance and sustainability goals," Magouyrk said.

Oracle Database, the world's leading database management system, has been fully enabled on Ampere CPUs, and Oracle is providing customers around the world the option to choose Ampere for both performance and efficiency.

In addition, all OCI services, numbering in the hundreds, are now running on Ampere processors. End customers can now easily migrate all of their workloads to the Ampere platform. This includes running AI Inferencing workloads that are enabled by Ampere's AI Optimizer software libraries. As a result, customers are already rapidly adopting Ampere's A1 instances on OCI, with A2 available before the end of the year.

These customers noted ease of adoption and better price-performance as key drivers.

8x8 said the company was able to migrate and port their services to OCI and Ampere within a matter of weeks, while Phenix said migrating to Ampere allows them to upgrade and modernize their software, expanding the services they can provide their customers.