Amazon Graviton4 server CPU shown beating AMD and Intel processors in multiple benchmarks

Amazon’s AWS Graviton4 Processor: A Game Changer in the Cloud Server Market

In context: Amazon’s AWS Graviton line of Arm-based server CPUs, designed by subsidiary Annapurna Labs, has been making waves since its introduction in 2018 for the Elastic Compute Cloud. These custom silicon chips, featuring 64-bit Neoverse cores, power AWS’s A1 instances tailored for Arm workloads such as web services, caching, and microservices.

The latest addition to this impressive lineup is the Graviton4 processor, which has caused quite a stir in the tech community. Exclusive to AWS’s cloud servers, the Graviton4 packs a punch with 96 Arm Neoverse V2 cores, each equipped with 2MB of L2 cache. With 12 channels of DDR5-5600 RAM, this processor boasts incredible memory bandwidth to support its powerful cores.

AWS is positioning the Graviton4 for its R8g instances, promising users up to triple the vCPUs and RAM compared to the previous Graviton3-based R7g instances. The company claims significant performance improvements across the board, including 30% faster web apps, 40% speedier databases, and at least 40% better Java software performance.

Performance benchmarks on Ubuntu 24.04 reveal the true capabilities of the Graviton4. In demanding HPC workloads like miniFE and Xcompact3d, this processor outperforms not only its predecessors but also AMD’s EPYC ‘Genoa’ chips.

One standout performance metric was in the ACES DGEMM HPC benchmark, where the Graviton4 metal instance scored an impressive 71,131 points, surpassing the competition.

While the Graviton4 excelled in many areas, it faced tough competition in code compilation against processors like the Ampere Altra Max and various Xeon and EPYC models. However, it did outperform the EPYC 9754 in the Timed LLVM Compilation test.

Surprisingly, the Graviton4 also excelled in workloads not traditionally associated with Arm chips, such as 7-Zip compression and cryptography algorithms like ChaCha20.

After extensive testing of over 30 workloads, Phoronix concluded that the Graviton4 is currently the fastest Arm server processor available, challenging the dominance of Intel and AMD chips across various tasks.

As the competition continues to evolve with new offerings like Intel’s Granite Rapids and AMD’s Turin on the horizon, AWS’s Graviton4 stands out as a performance powerhouse in the cloud server market.

Image credit: Phoronix