AMD expands confidential computing presence on Google Cloud

AMD announced new confidential virtual machines (VMs) on Google Cloud, which will be powered by AMD EPYC processors. These VMs complement the AMD EPYC processor portfolio of Confidential Computing on Google Cloud by delivering the performance of 3rd Generation EPYC processors in compute-optimized VMs.

AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), part of AMD Infinity Guard, is a critical Confidential Computing component provided by AMD EPYC processors.

This advanced hardware-based security feature encrypts full system memory as well as individual virtual machine memory, as well as isolating VM memory from the hypervisor, without affecting performance significantly. With the addition of Confidential Computing to N2D and C2D VMs, Google Cloud customers now have access to advanced hardware-enabled security features powered by 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors, which will help protect sensitive, diverse workloads.

“AMD has worked collaboratively with Google Cloud and Google’s security experts to provide customers access to advanced security technology while still achieving high performance in their workloads,” said Lynn Comp, corporate vice president, Cloud Business Unit, AMD. “With 3^rd Gen AMD EPYC processors powering the new confidential computing offerings from Google Cloud, customers can continue to enjoy the general purpose and compute optimized workload capabilities they’ve had from Google Cloud, all while feeling confident in the security of their data.”

“By providing our customers with advanced security technology from 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, we’re not only delivering more performance, but also optimizing Confidential Computing for more types of workloads,” said Nelly Porter, Group Product Manager, Google Cloud. “At Google Cloud, we believe that continuously investing in emerging technologies like Confidential Computing with partners like AMD will help us address our customers’ most pressing privacy concerns.”

Confidential N2D and C2D VMs with 3^rd Gen AMD EPYC processors:

• Enable AMD SEV, which keeps VM memory encrypted with a dedicated per-VM instance key that is generated and managed by the AMD Security Processor.
• The ability to run workloads without dramatically impacting performance compared to standard VMs, all while enabling robust protection capabilities against attacks originating in other VMs, on the same physical host, as well as from the hypervisor itself.
• One-click implementation of Confidential Computing on 3^rd Gen EPYC CPU powered N2D and C2D VMs with no code changes
• Simple upgrading to Confidential N2D VMs with the latest hardware by simply selecting “AMD Milan or later” as the CPU platform.

Confidential N2D and C2D VMs powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors are available in a variety of regions around the world, including us-central1 (Iowa), asia-southeast1 (Singapore), us-east1 (South Carolina), us-east4 (North Virginia), asia-east1 (Taiwan), europe-west4 (Netherlands), and others. Confidential VMs are available wherever N2D and C2D machines are.