Highly optimized cloud software and silicon have begun to emerge with refined cloud-native platforms targeted at servicing the needs of global cloud compute workloads, the majority of which are straightforward applications like web hosting, database management, search, encoding and analytics. As such, a new class of “Cloud Native Processors” has emerged, highly tuned for data center workloads, and a fairly new but now well-established player by the name of Ampere Computing has begun to define this market segment of chips.

This past week, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Virtual Machines featuring Ampere Altra processors, in 10 Azure regions globally. This marks another significant triumph for Ampere, which has landed wins with numerous leaders in the cloud space, including Google, Cloudflare, Tencent, and Oracle to name just a few.