Google Cloud Platform for Developers

Machine types

Virtual machines on Compute Engine are available in a number of configurations, known as machine types. Machine types can be categorized by use case as well as scale, where use case determines relative resource allocations (for example, more memory than vCPU), and scale represents total resource allocation for that type (for example, 4 GB of RAM per 2 vCPU).

Compute Engine and other GCP compute options allocate CPU resources in the form of virtual CPUs (vCPUs). The underlying hardware backing each vCPU depends slightly on the VM's machine type, but in general each vCPU is backed by a single Intel CPU hyperthread. The clock rate for a given vCPU will depend on which processor that hyperthread is on. These currently range between ...