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Google Cloud Platform builds Ivy Bridge to new Asian region

Joins the 'span planet with acceptable latency' club

Google has created a new “Asia” region and two new zones – “asia-east1-a” and “asia-east1-b” - for its cloudy Compute Engine service.

The new region uses Ivy Bridge CPUs, which means it is built on more modern Intel kit and should offer superior performance compared to Google's Sandy-Bridge-using US and Europe regions.

Google's not saying much more about the new region other than to say Asian developers can now play in Google's cloud without having to put up with trans-pacific of trans-eurasian latency. Developers in other regions, meanwhile, now have another option when deploying apps that target audiences in Asia and another chance to strengthen their disaster recovery regimes by storing data and ready-to-fire-up virtual machines on another continent.

More importantly, opening an Asian region means Google now joins Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in the “span planet with cloud at acceptable latency” club.

Doing so means Google can now more easily go head-to-head with those three players.

AWS and Microsoft are unlikely to break stride at the news, probably seeing it as inevitable. They may be a little miffed that Ivy Bridge silicon will be on offer, but given the rate at which all three are building and refreshing their infrastructure, if Google has a lead it won't last for long.

One last thought: Google says Compute Engine runs on "the same infrastructure and technology that powers Google". If the Asian region is its newest, how many Google bit barns are running Sandy Bridge-powered kit? ®

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