The new Azure Cobalt 100 chip focuses on general-purpose workloads in the cloud on ARM-based VMs and is now available for free testing in Azure Virtual Machines for a limited time.

Late last year, Microsoft introduced its first two homegrown chips: Azure Maia 100 and Azure Cobalt 100. Azure Maia is an “AI accelerator” designed for Windows Copilot and Bing Chat, but is not yet available. Read more about Azure Maia 100 in a blog post from Microsoft.

Azure Cobalt 100, an ARM chip, is now available in preview in Azure Virtual Machines. In comparison, Microsoft says the Azure Cobalt 100 VMs can deliver up to 1.4x CPU performance, up to 1.5x performance on Java-based workloads, and up to 2x performance on web servers, .NET applications and in-memory cache applications deliver the previous generation of Azure ARM-based VMs.

These VMs support 4x local storage IOPS (with NVMe Direct) and up to 1.5x network bandwidth compared to previous generation Azure ARM-based VMs.

You can test the new Azure Cobalt 100 chips in these regions:

• Central USA
• Eastern USA
• Eastern USA 2
• Northern Europe
• South East Asia
• Western Europe
• Western USA 2

Use of the Azure Cobalt 100 chips is free during the trial period. This only concerns the computing power; other items such as memory are calculated. It is currently unclear how high the price will be after the test period ends. You can register for the test program here.

Insider Preview versions of Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise are available with the Cobalt 100 virtual machines. It also supports a number of Linux distributions such as Canonical Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and others.