Microsoft Launches 2nd-Gen Arm CPU with 50%+ Boost

Recently, Microsoft Azure officially introduced its second-generation, cloud-native Arm processor — Azure Cobalt 200. The first servers powered by Cobalt 200 are already running in Azure data centers, with broader deployment and customer availability expected in 2026.

Built on TSMC's advanced 3nm process, the Cobalt 200 uses a chiplet-based design featuring two compute chiplets, each equipped with 66 Arm Neoverse V3 CPU cores. Every core includes 3MB of L2 cache, paired with six memory channels per chiplet. The system also integrates 192MB of shared L3 cache, while the two chiplets communicate through Microsoft's custom high-bandwidth interconnect to ensure efficient, balanced performance.

Microsoft noted that Cobalt 200 was heavily optimized for real Azure workloads, with engineers evaluating more than 350,000 system configurations during development. As a result, the new processor delivers over 50% performance improvement compared with the previous-generation Cobalt 100, all while maintaining strong energy efficiency.

Cobalt 200 also supports per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, advanced hardware security features, and built-in compression and accelerator units — making it even more capable for modern cloud computing workloads.