Deploying mission-critical applications on Google Cloud can yield immediate benefits in terms of performance and total cost of ownership (TCO). That’s why Google Cloud is partnering with Intel to help our mutual customers optimize their most demanding workloads on Intel-based instances. The Intel Software Center of Excellence (CoE) for Google Cloud launched as a pilot in North America last year, and the results were dramatic — with an increase in Tensorflow inference performance for ad ranking algorithms, gain in throughput and reduction in latency for Redis under heavy loads and faster transcoding of videos to 1080p.

Now, Intel and Google Cloud are expanding the program globally by opening it up to select high-growth enterprise accounts.

The Intel Software Center of Excellence is a white-glove, high-touch program for customers looking to reduce latency and improve workload efficiency. This program is designed to enhance the value customers get from their Intel Xeon Scalable processors running in Google Cloud, offering them benchmarking and performance optimization techniques. It provides:

  • Direct access to Intel engineers providing white-glove service
  • Guidance for improving the price performance and the operational performance of Intel-based Google Cloud instances
  • Code-level recommendations on Intel processors so customers can experience the most benefit possible from their Google Cloud investments

Optimizing the performance of your most demanding workloads

Joining the CoE program is an opportunity to work directly with Intel engineers to maximize the performance of your workloads on Intel instances in Google Cloud. Here are just a few examples of workloads that CoE participants are able to fine-tune and better manage performance through the program:

  • Databases: Learn to use a wide variety of relational and nonrelational databases to address latency issues at peak loads or under complex conditions, such as Redis “latency knee” for e-commerce applications.
  • Analytics: Get guidance on using Apache Spark.
  • AI inference, including Recommendation, natural language processing, and vision recognition: Take advantage of Intel DL Boost in N2/C2 instances and Intel Math Kernel Library, and Tensorflow optimization.
  • Secure web transactions: Built-in Intel crypto instructions can speed security processing for applications such as NGINX and WordPress.
  • Language runtime libraries, including Golang Crypto, Java, and Python.
  • Media, including video transcode, encode, and decode, as well as image processing, such as AVX-512 optimization and library optimizations like multithreading.

“The collaboration between Intel, Google and Equifax utilizing the Intel Software CoE successfully optimized Equifax’s environment by producing nearly 2x throughput and a 50% drop in our critical metric for latency,” says Bryson Koehler, Chief Product, Data, Analytics & Technology Officer at Equifax. “The CoE met our objectives around cost optimization while improving performance SLAs for our end-customers.”

How it works

The Intel Software Center of Excellence engagement takes place in three phases:

  • Phase 1: Discovery. The Google Cloud and Intel teams collaborate with you to review your performance objectives and identify key projects and long-term goals that may influence compute trends. 
  • Phase 2: Performance Review. Intel engineers leverage your metrics and Intel internal resources to review resource utilization across your service footprint. 
  • Phase 3: Performance report. The engagement concludes with the Intel team delivering a Performance Report, which includes detailed optimization recommendations, an action plan, and an implementation plan, and recommendations for potential support from Google Cloud Professional Services Organization (PSO), which can give operational guidance on getting the most value from your Google Cloud products.

Get in touch to participate

The Intel Software CoE is open by application. Once your application is reviewed and accepted, there is no charge for the service. To participate, please complete the online application.