At Google Cloud Next ’25, we announced the preview of AlloyDB on C4A virtual machines, powered by Google Axion processors, our custom Arm-based CPUs. Today, we’re glad to announce that C4A virtual machines are generally available!
For transactional workloads, leveraging C4A, AlloyDB provides nearly 50% better price-performance compared to N series machines for transactional workloads, and up to 2x better throughput performance compared to Amazon’s Graviton4-based offerings, bringing substantial efficiency gains to your database operations.
Let’s dive into the benefits of running high-performance databases and analytics engines on C4A.
Meeting the demands of modern data workloads
Business-critical applications require infrastructure that delivers high performance, cost-efficiency, high availability, robust security, scalability, and strong data protection. However, the relentless growth of data volumes and increasingly complex processing requirements, coupled with slowing traditional CPU advancements, can present significant hurdles. Furthermore, the rise of sophisticated analytics and vector search for generative AI introduces new challenges to maintaining performance and efficiency. These trends necessitate greater computing power, but existing CPU architectures don’t always align perfectly with database operational needs, potentially leading to performance bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
C4A virtual machines are engineered to address these challenges head-on, bringing compelling advantages to your managed Google Cloud database workloads. They deliver significantly improved price-performance compared to N-series instances, translating directly into more cost-effective database operations. Purpose-built to handle data-intensive workloads that require real-time processing, C4A instances are well-suited for high-performance databases and demanding analytics engines. Integrating Axion-based C4A VMs for AlloyDB underscores our commitment to adding this technology across our database portfolio, for a diverse range of database deployments.
AlloyDB on Axion: Pushing performance boundaries
AlloyDB, our PostgreSQL-compatible database service designed for the most demanding enterprise workloads, sees remarkable gains when running on Axion C4A instances, delivering:
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3 million transactions per minute
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up to 45% better price-performance than N series VMs for transactional workloads
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up to 2x higher throughput and 3x better price-performance than Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL running on Graviton4
Source Credit: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/c4a-axion-processors-for-alloydb-now-ga/
