Google Cloud Tau T2A Ampere Altra vs. T2D AMD EPYC Performance

At the 48 vCPU size, the T2D instance was 74% faster than the T2A instance of the same size.

For the PostgreSQL database server performance, the Tau T2D series was consistently delivering better performance over the T2A series. We'll see with the upcoming PostgreSQL 15 whether there are any new AArch64 advantages but for now Google's Tau T2D series had the significant advantage -- in addition to being able to scale up to 60 vCPUs.

The Tau T2D series was also performing better with the Apache Cassandra database.

It's fascinating to see how competitive Arm server CPUs have come over the years going back to the days of testing Calxeda servers... The gap has certainly narrowed in recent years with improved processor designs and also the software ecosystem continuing to mature.

With the ClickHouse database software, the T2A instances were faster at 8 and 16 vCPUs but at the higher vCPU counts is where the tides turned in favor of the T2D VMs.