Keynote Interview: AMD's Steve Berg on the Hardware Behind Cosmos DB | Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2026

Steve Berg discusses how AMD EPYC hardware underpins Azure Cosmos DB at global scale, and how CPU-level considerations connect to Cosmos DB concepts like Request Units, autoscale, RU pooling, and serverless.

Overview

Steve Berg (AMD) joins Kirill Gavrylyuk (Microsoft) for a keynote interview at Azure Cosmos DB Conf 2026 focused on the hardware and co-engineering behind Azure Cosmos DB.

Key themes covered in the session include:

• How Azure Cosmos DB Request Units (RUs) ultimately translate into CPU work, and why CPU core behavior matters for database performance.
• AMD EPYC’s multi-generation presence in Azure over nearly a decade, and what successive CPU generations have enabled for cloud database workloads.
• How AMD EPYC powers Azure Cosmos DB across datacenters worldwide.
• Hardware features relevant to database performance, including:
  • 3D V-Cache
  • Higher core counts
• Performance and cost claims for the newest EPYC generation (including up to 35% improvements in performance and performance-per-dollar).
• AMD ↔ Microsoft co-engineering and how hardware/software feedback loops influence Cosmos DB capabilities and efficiency, including:
  • Autoscale
  • RU pooling
  • Serverless
• The broader optimization goal of improving performance per dollar per watt for large-scale distributed database workloads.

Links mentioned

• Full keynote: https://aka.ms/CosmosConf26Keynote
• Sessions playlist: https://aka.ms/CosmosConf26Playlist
• Cosmos Conf Challenge (DP-420 voucher): https://aka.ms/CosmosDBConfChallenge
• Post-event survey: https://aka.ms/CosmosConf2026Survey
• Conference site: https://aka.ms/azurecosmosdbconf

Speakers

• Steve Berg (AMD): https://www.linkedin.com/in/berg-steve/ and https://developer.azurecosmosdb.com/conf/#speaker/steve-berg
• Kirill Gavrylyuk (Microsoft): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirillgavrylyuk/ and https://developer.azurecosmosdb.com/conf/#speaker/kirill-gavrylyuk