Oracle, in collaboration with chipmaker Ampere Computing, became the latest public cloud provider to launch Arm-based compute instances, joining rivals Amazon and Microsoft.

The company’s A1 Compute instances, which range from one to 80 cores and up to 64 gigabytes of memory, are the company’s first foray into cloud-computing on Arm processors. The instances are powered by Ampere’s first-generation data center chip, the Altra, which boasts up to 80 Arm Neoverse N1 cores, each with a sustained frequency of 3 GHz. The cloud provider is also offering bare metal servers with up to 160 cores and a terabyte of system memory.

“We are seeing increasing demand for server-side Arm computing and adding Arm-based compute instances to our extensive portfolio of offerings enables customers to pick and choose the right processors for their workloads,” said Clay Magouyrk, EVP of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Oracle is positioning the instances as a lower-cost alternative to traditional x86-based instances for customers hosting general-purpose compute workloads, database caches, mobile application development environments, and scientific workloads.

Oracle bills the instances as the first “penny-per-core server in the cloud.” Pricing starts at $0.01 per core per hour, and $0.0015 per gigabyte of memory per hour, making it one of the lowest-cost public cloud offerings today.

In addition to pricing, Oracle had added Arm-based instances to its forever-free tier, which provides customers with four A1 compute cores and up to 24 gigabytes of system memory at no charge. These resources are paired with Oracle’s development stack, including Oracle Linux, Java, MySQL, GraavlVM, and the Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes to ease developer adoption.

“We have been investing heavily in these technology platforms to make sure they run incredibly well on Arm processors,” Magouyrk said, adding the ecosystem is already incredibly rich thanks to the number of developers already developing for Arm mobile platforms.

“The free tier is such a great offering,” Ampere founder and CEO Renée James said during a Tuesday press conference. “Experimentation and something you can try before you buy is the way to get excited about a platform.”

The further accelerate Arm-adoption in the cloud, Oracle is extending additional credits to academic institutions to bring their workloads to Arm and OCI.

Oracle is the latest cloud provider to throw its support behind the new breed of Arm-based data center processors.

Over the past few years, the major cloud providers have dabbled with x86 alternatives. Microsoft adopted Marvell’s ThunderX2 processor to power its Azure public cloud, at least internally, while Amazon leaped headlong into Arm development with its internally developed Graviton and Graviton2 processors.

Amazon in particular is betting big on custom silicon with its new CEO Andy Jassy unveiling a new artificial intelligence training chip called Trainium in December.

Meanwhile, Microsoft last week announced plans to deploy Ampere’s Altra CPUs in its Azure public cloud as part of its carbon-neutral initiatives.