How Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are Powering Real-World Solutions and Boosting Performance

Omar Khan, Rani Borkar, and Arun Kishan detail how Azure Cobalt 100 VMs deliver higher performance and energy efficiency for modern workloads, backed by industry case studies and Microsoft’s own usage.

How Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are Powering Real-World Solutions

Azure Cobalt 100 is Microsoft’s in-house, custom-built Arm-based CPU, designed to power general compute workloads in the Azure cloud environment. These systems offer high performance, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for a broad range of applications.

Global Availability and Use Cases

Cobalt 100-based VMs are now available in 29 Microsoft datacenter regions globally, supporting diverse industries and delivering measurable results for Azure customers. Major analytics and data platform providers like Databricks and Snowflake have adopted Cobalt 100 VMs to run large-scale data workloads, supporting real-time insights and machine learning capabilities. The balance of compute power and energy efficiency makes these VMs particularly effective for demanding data processing tasks.

Customer Success Stories

• OneTrust reported meaningful improvements in throughput and efficiency for AI-ready governance platforms, citing the benefits of Microsoft’s Arm-based architecture for performance and cost-effectiveness.
• Siemens achieved up to a 20% performance boost in silicon verification workloads, accelerating their testing cycles and improving efficiency.
• Sprinklr migrated 70% of their AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) workloads to Cobalt 100 VMs, noting measurable gains in throughput and cost-efficiency.
• Temenos set a new benchmark for scalable, AI-powered banking with these VMs, achieving a 40% efficiency improvement compared to previous infrastructure.

Microsoft Services and Performance Gains

• Microsoft Teams leveraged Cobalt 100 VMs for media processing, achieving up to 45% better performance and reducing compute core requirements by up to 35% for audio/video streaming workloads.
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) realized 40% better performance in its data curator microservices, accelerating threat detection and improving user experience.

These examples show the impact of Cobalt 100 VMs on both customer and Microsoft workloads, underscoring the system’s advantages in real-world cloud scenarios.

Technical Benefits

The Cobalt 100 VMs are a result of Microsoft’s integrated approach to systems design. By controlling CPU design and cloud infrastructure, Azure achieves consistent performance, efficient power and thermal management, and optimal workload distribution. This allows organizations to modernize infrastructure with highly performant and energy-efficient compute resources.

Get Started

• Learn about Cobalt 100 VMs
• Watch the Cobalt 100 panel at Microsoft Build
• Explore Azure’s microfluidics cooling for AI chips
• Read about Azure’s global infrastructure

Conclusion

Azure Cobalt 100 VMs present a compelling option for organizations seeking efficient, cost-effective, and scalable cloud compute. With proven performance across real-world applications and mission-critical Microsoft services, these VMs represent an important step forward in cloud infrastructure innovation.

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