Microsoft has introduced Cobalt 200 , a new Arm-based CPU designed for cloud services across Azure.

Microsoft has introduced Cobalt 200, a new Arm-based CPU designed for cloud services across Azure.

The company says the chip, which succeeds Cobalt 100 and retains compatibility with existing deployments, was designed using workload patterns observed across Azure environments, rather than industry-standard benchmarks, and it delivers up to 50% higher performance.

These workloads include data analytics, web applications, network-intensive services, and systems that rely heavily on storage access, targeting real-world usage.

Efficiency-focused architecture and power controls

Cobalt 200 incorporates per-core Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), which enables each of the 132 cores to operate at different performance levels, thereby reducing unnecessary energy consumption.

The chip ...