Scaleway doubles down on ARM-based cloud servers

Iliad’s cloud hosting division Scaleway has been betting on ARM chipsets for years because they believe the future of hosting is going to be based on ARM’s processor architecture. The company just launched more powerful ARMv8 options and added more cores to its cheapest options.

If you’re not familiar with processor architecture, your computer and your smartphone use two different chipsets. Your laptop uses an x86 CPU manufactured by Intel or AMD, while your smartphone uses an ARM-based system-on-a-chip.

Back in April, Scaleway launched 64-bit ARM-based virtual servers thanks to Cavium ThunderX systems-on-a-chip. And the most affordable option is crazy cheap. For €2.99 per month ($3.30), you could get 2 ARMv8 cores and 2GB of RAM, 50GB of SSD with unlimited bandwidth at 200Mbit/s.

With today’s update, Scaleway is doubling the number of cores on this option — you now get 4 cores instead of 2, making it quite competitive with entry-level virtual private servers on DigitalOcean or Linode. The company told me that it could be the best compute-to-price ratio on the market. For €5.99, you now get 6 cores and 4GB of RAM.

And Scaleway also thinks you should be using ARM-based servers for your demanding tasks, as well. You can now get up to 64 cores and up to 128GB of RAM. This beefy option is quite expensive, at €279.99 per month, but Scaleway also added a bunch of intermediary options with 16, 32 or 48 cores.

My main complaint remains the same. Scaleway currently has two data centers in Paris and Amsterdam. The company needs to think about opening up new offerings in Asia and the U.S. if it wants to become a serious contender in the highly competitive cloud hosting market.