Introducing Compute- and Memory-Optimized VMs for Google Compute Engine

Whether you’re running compute-bound applications for HPC or large, in-memory database applications like SAP HANA, you need the right mix of compute resources for the job, while also keeping an eye on price-performance. The vast majority of enterprise workloads run successfully on Google Cloud Platform using our general-purpose VMs. However, as you port more workloads to the cloud, you may need VMs that are optimized for specific types of workloads.

Today we are pleased to announce the expansion of our Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) offerings to include new Compute-Optimized VMs and Memory-Optimized VMs. Both are based on 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, which we delivered to customers last October–the first cloud provider to do so. In addition, these processors will also be coming to our general-purpose VMs. This means you’ll have access to a complete portfolio of machine types to successfully run your workloads across a wide range of memory and compute requirements.

Compute-Optimized VMs

Compute-Optimized VMs (C2) are a new compute family on GCP, exposing high per-thread performance and memory speeds that benefit the most compute-intensive workloads. Compute-Optimized VMs are great for HPC, electronic design automation (EDA), gaming, single-threaded applications and more. The new Compute-Optimized VMs offer a greater than 40% performance improvement compared to current GCP VMs. They also leverage 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors and can run at a sustained clock speed of 3.8 GHz. Additionally, C2 VMs provide full transparency into the architecture of the underlying server platforms, enabling advanced performance tuning. You can choose Compute-Optimized VMs with up to 60 vCPUs, 240 GBs of memory, and up to 3TB of local storage. Compute-Optimized VMs are currently available in alpha.