Oracle's database software is used by major banks and corporations to track transactions. For the past several decades, the software has been written to run on chips from Chipzilla.

Oracle said that the database will also run on chips made based on a technological architecture from Arm. 

Oracle's founder  Larry Ellison said it was a major commitment to move to a new supplier and Oracle had moved to a new architecture too.

"We think that this is the future. The old Intel X86 architecture, after many decades in the market, is reaching its limit."

Oracle is using Ampere's chips in its own data centres in its cloud computing service, which is trying to catch up to market leaders such as Amazon Web Services. Ellison said Ampere's chips are much more power efficient than offerings from its other two major chip suppliers, Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia.

Ellison said that, for regulatory reasons, some Oracle data centers cannot obtain any more electricity, so the only way the company can keep expanding its cloud service is by doing more computing for each watt of power it can access, which is why it has turned to Ampere's chips.

"We have got more room. We just don't have more electrical capacity. By upgrading to Ampere, we're able to take that room, double the compute and stay within the same power envelope," Ellison said.