Getting to know the C3 machine series

The Compute Engine C3 machine series, now available in Private Preview, is the first VM in the public cloud with the 4^th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor and with Google’s custom Intel IPU. C3 machine instances use offload hardware for more predictable and efficient compute, high-performance storage, and a programmable packet processing capability for low latency and accelerated, secure networking.

“We are pleased to have co-designed the first ASIC Infrastructure Processing Unit with Google Cloud, which has now launched in the new C3 machine series. A first of its kind in any public cloud, C3 VMs will run workloads on 4^th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors while they free up programmable packet processing to the IPUs securely at line rates of 200Gb/s. This Intel and Google collaboration enables customers through infrastructure that is more secure, flexible, and performant.”– Nick McKeown, Senior Vice President, Intel Fellow and General Manager of Network and Edge Group

The System on a Chip hardware architecture introduced in C3 VMs can enable better security, isolation, and performance. In the future, this purpose-built architecture will also allow us to offer a richer product portfolio, such as support for native bare-metal instances.

Hyperdisk block storage and 200 Gbps networking

Block storage and VMs go hand in hand. Last month, we announced the Preview release of Hyperdisk, our next-generation block storage. The new architecture decouples compute instance sizing from storage performance to deliver 80% higher IOPS per vCPU than other leading hyperscale cloud provider. And compared with the previous generation C2, C3 VMs with Hyperdisk deliver 4x higher throughput and 10x higher IOPS. Now, you don’t have to choose expensive, larger compute instances just to get the storage performance you need for data workloads such as Hadoop and Microsoft SQL Server.

To enable high performance computing workloads, C3 VMs also feature 200 Gbps low-latency networking powered by our custom IPU, as well as line-rate encryption using the open source PSP protocol.

What our customers and partners are saying

Where we are headed

With the exponential rise in the complexity of cloud infrastructure, we as an industry must turn to automation to manage these platforms efficiently at scale. Along with Infrastructure as Code, custom chips like the Titan, the TPU and the IPU, pave the way for a not-so-distant future where we’ll automate over half of all infrastructure decisions, configuring systems dynamically in response to usage patterns. At Google Cloud, we are committed to continuing our long history of hardware innovation with a focus on workload optimization and automation.

To learn more about C3 VMs and Hyperdisk, check out our session at NEXT ‘22, How Google Cloud optimizes infrastructure for your workloads. To request access to the C3 VMs or Hyperdisk, please reach out to your sales representative or account manager.