By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Ampere Computing, a semiconductor firm headed by ex-Intel executives that is planning to list its shares publicly, said on Tuesday its flagship chips will be offered by Alphabet’s Google Cloud service.
The deal is significant because cloud computing firms such as Google are some of the biggest buyers of data center chips. Jeff Wittich, Ampere’s chief product officer, said more deals with other cloud providers will follow later this year, but he declined to name them.
Ampere’s chips use technology from SoftBank Group’s Arm, which revealed earlier this month in initial public offering filings that it owns a 6.8% stake in Ampere. Oracle is also a major shareholder in the startup, which last year filed confidential paperwork to go public but has not said when it plans to list shares.
The deal announced on Tuesday represents the first time a cloud computing company has offered Ampere’s “AmpereOne” chips, which have custom-designed computing cores that help set the chip apart from other Arm-based chips such as those made by Amazon.com and others.
Ampere’s chips aim to use less energy than rival chips from Intel while doing similar kinds of computing work.
“These are now much easier for people to find,” Wittich said.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Simao)
