Oracle: Ampere to facilitate the development of more climate-friendly data centers?

Ampere, a chip startup, has launched new family of data center chips, which are pegged to make data centers more energy efficient and climate-friendly. Headquartered in the Bay Area, the company's solution is based on designs from Arm Holdings, the same technology used in mobile phones. This week, Oracle shared that the company has modified its flagship database software to work on a new category of computing chip, beginning with those from Ampere. 

The company's chips are reportedly much more energy efficient, and the likes of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are already using its designs. According to Larry Ellison, Oracle's founder, these chips are "the future," with old Intel X86 infrastructure "reaching its limits." Oracle is using Ampere's chips in its own data centers in its cloud computing service, as they have enabled Oracle to "double the compute" and stay within the same power envelope.

This is key for Oracle, which reportedly has space to expand, but is limited on power, due to regulatory reasons. Indeed, data centers are increasingly being hit with restrictions due to data centers already straining limited power supplies at local power grids. 

Oracle has reportedly invested $850 million in the Ampere, and no longer buys any processors from Intel. 

"Today's announcement highlights the broad architectural shift across the market to Ampere processors that meet the demands of both modern cloud and on-premises environments," said Jeff Wittich, chief product officer of Ampere. 

"With the Ampere Altra family of processors, customers of the world's most popular database – Oracle Database – now have a high-performance, energy-efficient architecture built with sustainability in mind for organisations of all sizes."