Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Arm-Based Compute

OCI Ampere Compute is a general-purpose, Arm-based compute platform based on the Ampere processor. OCI Ampere A1 Compute (based on Ampere Altra processors) and OCI Ampere A2 Compute (based on AmpereOne processors) instances provide superior price-performance, near linear scaling, built-in security due to the single-threaded core architecture, and a broad developer ecosystem.

Arm processors, ubiquitous in mobile computing, are increasingly used in PCs, laptops, and servers. Arm processors use a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture, which requires less power and less silicon for each core than x86 processors. Arm puts more cores in a CPU socket and provides more dedicated resources for each core. As a result, Arm processors provide predictable performance, provide the highest density of cores, and consume less power. OCI Ampere Compute eases and optimizes server-side development on Arm by providing the performance, features, and scalability required for cloud-to-edge infrastructure on Arm

OCI Ampere Compute instances are suitable for a wide range of applications and use cases. For example:

  • Containerized workloads (for example, Kubernetes)
  • CPU-based AI and machine learning (ML) inferencing
  • Databases and in-memory databases, including MySQL
  • Web and cloud native applications
  • Mobile apps and game development
  • Media services and video streaming

Oracle's development stack is available on OCI Ampere Compute, including Oracle Linux, Java, MySQL, GraalVM, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Kubernetes Engine. To make it easier to start developing on OCI Ampere Compute, you can use the pre-built Oracle Linux Cloud Developer platform image. For a full list of open source organizations and partners that have developed solutions for OCI Ampere Compute, see the product page.

Creating Arm-Based Compute Instances

You can create Arm-based virtual machine (VM) instances using OCI A1 (Compute) and OCI A2 (Compute). If you require bare-metal instances, you can use OCI A1 (Compute). If you are an existing OCI A1 (Compute) customer interested in testing or migrating to OCI A1 (Compute) and OCI A2 (Compute), no re-architecting is required.

Tip

If this is your first time creating an instance, for a complete guided workflow see: Tutorial: Launching Your First Linux Instance.

If you're already familiar with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and want to explore the full set of configuration options that are available when you create an instance, follow the detailed steps to create an instance.

Flexible hardware specifications: The OCI Ampere A1 Compute shapes  include the BM.Standard.A1.160 shape for bare metal instances and the VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape for VMs. The OCI Ampere A2 Compute shapes include VM.Standard.A2.Flex for VMs. For information about the OCPU count, memory, storage, and networking details of these shapes, see Compute Shapes.

Because the OCI Ampere Compute shapes for VMs are a flexible shapes, you can customize the number of OCPUs and amount of memory that are allocated to each instance. This flexibility lets you build VMs that match your workload, enabling you to optimize performance and minimize cost.

Images: We recommend the Oracle Linux Cloud Developer image, available as a platform image. Oracle Linux Cloud Developer provides the latest development tools, languages and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure software development kits (SDKs) to rapidly launch a comprehensive development environment. The Oracle Linux and Ubuntu platform images are also supported.

Managing instances: After you create an OCI Ampere Compute instance, you can use many of the features that are available for compute instances. For example:

Getting Started with OCI Ampere A1 Compute for Free

All tenancies on OCI A1 (Compute), including paid and trial accounts, get the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free for OCI Ampere A1 Compute. For more information see Oracle Cloud Free Tier.

Tutorials and Reference Architectures

To get started with OCI Ampere A1 Compute, follow the step-by-step instructions in these tutorials:

Deploying Containerized Applications on OCI Ampere Compute

OCI Ampere Compute is a native cloud platform designed for running containers to build native cloud workloads.

Use Kubernetes Engine (OKE) to define and create Kubernetes clusters to enable the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. For more information, see Running Applications on Arm-based Nodes.

Use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry to store, share, and manage development artifacts like Docker images in an Oracle-managed registry.