AMD 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" CPUs Power Google Cloud’s New C4D and H4D VMs, Delivering Leadership Performance in AI and HPC

AMD continues its momentum in the data center market with the official announcement that its 5th Gen EPYC processors are now powering Google Cloud’s latest virtual machines. The new C4D and H4D VMs, launched in preview and slated for general availability later this year, are built on AMD’s cutting-edge Zen 5 architecture and represent a major milestone in the adoption of the EPYC 9005 "Turin" platform in cloud computing environments.

In a press release issued by AMD, the company confirmed that its newest EPYC CPUs will power the general-purpose C4D and HPC-optimized H4D instances in Google Cloud. C4D VMs are designed for a wide variety of enterprise workloads—including AI inference and web services—and deliver up to 80% higher throughput per vCPU compared to previous generation instances, thanks to the Zen 5 architecture's performance enhancements. Meanwhile, H4D VMs are tailored for high-performance computing (HPC) and offer efficient multi-core scaling using Cloud RDMA, enabling performance at the scale of tens of thousands of cores.

Dan McNamara, AMD SVP and GM of the Server Business, stated:
"Since our launch, 5th Gen AMD EPYC solutions have been widely adopted across our OEM partners, enterprise customers, and now we're excited to bring it to the cloud."

This development underscores AMD’s growing influence in the data center and cloud segment, long dominated by Intel Xeon processors. While Google Cloud has not disclosed which specific EPYC 9005 SKUs are being used, it is expected that flagship models such as the 192-core EPYC 9965 ("Zen 5C"), 128-core EPYC 9755 ("Zen 5"), and the high-frequency 9575F (the first 5GHz EPYC SKU) are likely contenders for inclusion in these performance-intensive workloads.

With AMD claiming up to a 37% increase in IPC and TDP reaching as high as 500W in some SKUs, the 5th Gen EPYC “Turin” CPUs represent a generational leap in server performance. In benchmarks and early adoption reports, these CPUs have shown significant gains in AI, analytics, and compute-heavy workloads compared to Intel's latest Xeon 5 offerings.

Google Cloud customers can now preview C4D and H4D virtual machines across select regions, with full-scale deployment expected by the end of the year. This collaboration marks a critical validation of AMD’s server roadmap and highlights the increasing competitiveness of AMD in the high-performance cloud infrastructure market.

What are your thoughts on AMD's push into AI and HPC via Google Cloud? Let us know in the comments.