Oct 30 (Reuters) - Google Cloud, a unit of Alphabet Inc ( GOOG )

, said on Wednesday that Spotify Technology ( SPOT )

and Paramount Global ( PARAA ) are using a new chip that it

designed with technology from Arm Holdings to power

their streaming services.

Google has made the new Axion chip, a central processing

unit, or CPU, available to all customers on its cloud service.

It is expected to compete for software developers' budgets

against traditional offerings from Intel ( INTC ) and Advanced

Micro Devices ( AMD ).

Google is the latest major cloud computing firm to offer a

chip made with technology from Arm.

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) have also created

their own Arm-based CPUs that they rent out to developers, and

Ampere Computing, a startup founded by Intel ( INTC ) veterans, is

selling chips to Oracle's cloud unit, among others.

The primary draw of the Arm-based chips is that they use far

less electricity to get the same computing done than their Intel ( INTC )

and AMD counterparts.

Google said its chip, which it sells via service called an

"instance," is about 60% more energy efficient than conventional

CPUs, and every watt of power saved can be used for other tasks

such as powering artificial intelligence, said Mark Lohmeyer,

vice president and general manager of compute and artificial

intelligence infrastructure at Google Cloud.

"This is not the first Arm instance that we've made

available in the cloud, but I will say this is the first

Google-designed Arm processor, and the first that we have fully

brought into the overall Google infrastructure portfolio,"

Lohmeyer told Reuters.

Google Cloud has already been using the chips internally to

power some of its paid cloud services before the company on

Wednesday made it available to all customers.

While Google Cloud also offers Arm-based chips from Ampere

and will continue to support its past offerings, Lohmeyer said

the company is turning its focus to its own Arm-based chips.

"We expect this to be the primary offering that our

customers will use going forward."