Azul Platform Prime Now Supports 64-Bit Arm, Including AWS Graviton Processors

February 8, 2023 Off By David

Azul announced that its high-performance Java runtime, Azul Platform Prime, now supports 64-bit Arm architectures including Amazon Web Services (AWS) Graviton-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Together, this pairing allows customers to optimize cloud costs, and boost the performance of cloud-native applications, popular open-source technologies and Java-based frameworks.

“Technical and business leaders face a paradoxical set of priorities: deliver innovative cloud-based applications and optimize operational costs,” said Scott Sellers, CEO and co-founder, Azul. “Azul Platform Prime reduces cloud costs by up to 50 percent with its unique ability to improve application performance and service levels. We are seeing more and more customers choose Platform Prime when running Java applications on AWS Graviton2 and AWS Graviton3 processors as a ‘best-in-breed’ practice for addressing the margin pressure created by cloud spending.”

Azul brings more than 20 years of leadership in the Java market and supports more versions of Java than any other vendor, including Oracle (see this source). Azul has long driven Java support for emerging hardware architectures, including leading the OpenJDK community effort (JEP 391) to add support for Apple Silicon Arm-based Macs, and now supports AWS Graviton2 and Graviton3 processors for cloud deployments.

“At Heirloom Computing, we go way beyond traditional mainframe migration solutions to deliver agile cloud-native applications that plug & play with any cloud, and on a Java technology stack that accelerates our customer’s transformation journey,” said Gary Crook, CEO of Heirloom Computing, Azul partner. “Based on what we have seen from our benchmarks, it’s clear that the combination of Azul Platform Prime running on AWS Graviton processors will deliver the next-level price and performance targets needed for our customers.”

Arm platforms are increasingly attractive because of their price-performance benefits and are rapidly growing in popularity. According to Gartner, “by 2025, Arm-based server shipments will account for around 20% of worldwide (except China) infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities and 55% of platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities from hyperscale service providers.” (Gartner, Forecast Analysis: Arm-Based Servers, Worldwide, Kiyomi Yamada, Adrian O’Connell, Alan Priestly and Uko Tian, November 2021)

“Our customers can address cost savings by choosing a solution that is powered by AWS Graviton processors which offer performance and price improvements,” said Raj Pai, Vice President, EC2 Product Management at AWS. “AWS invests in silicon innovation so customers have their choice of instance types that are appropriate for their workloads.”