• Google Cloud N4 Series Benchmarks: Google Axion vs. • AMD EPYC Performance Google Cloud recently launched their N4A series powered by their in-house Axion ARM64 processors. • In that launch-day benchmarking last month was looking at how the N4A with Axion compared to their prior-generation ARM64 VMs powered by Ampere Altra. • There were dramatic generational gains, but how does the N4A stand up to the AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon instances? • Here are some follow-up benchmarks I had done to explore the N4A performance against the Intel Xeon N4 and AMD EPYC N4D series. • Today’s benchmarking is looking at how the 16 vCPU N4A instance powered by Google Axion processors compares to the 16 vCPU N4 instance powered by Intel Xeon Emerald Rapids and then the 16 vCPU N4D instance powered by AMD EPYC Turin.

Article Summaries:

  • Google Cloud’s latest N4A instances, powered by its in‑house Axion ARM64 processors, were benchmarked against the company’s Intel‑based N4 (Xeon Emerald Rapids) and AMD‑based N4D (EPYC Turin) VMs. All tests used 16‑vCPU configurations, 400 GB storage, and Ubuntu 25.10. The N4A delivers 16 physical cores (no SMT), while the N4 and N4D use eight physical cores with hyper‑threading to reach 16 vCPUs. In Iowa, hourly pricing was $0.71 for N4A, $0.77 for N4D, and $0.82 for N4, indicating that the Axion‑based VM offers competitive performance at a lower cost per hour.

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