Amazon EC2 G3 Instances

Accelerate your graphics-intensive workloads with powerful GPU instances

Amazon EC2 G3 instances are the latest generation of Amazon EC2 GPU graphics instances that deliver a powerful combination of CPU, host memory, and GPU capacity. G3 instances are ideal for graphics-intensive applications such as 3D visualizations, mid to high-end virtual workstations, virtual application software, 3D rendering, application streaming, video encoding, gaming, and other server-side graphics workloads.

G3 instances provides access to NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs, each with up to 2,048 parallel processing cores, 8 GiB of GPU memory, and a hardware encoder supporting up to 10 H.265 (HEVC) 1080p30 streams and up to 18 H.264 1080p30 streams. With the latest driver releases, these GPUs provide support for OpenGL, DirectX, CUDA, OpenCL, and Capture SDK (formerly known as GRID SDK).

See how Amazon EC2 G3 instances can help you with your graphics-intensive applications

Benefits

POWERFUL & FAST

Whether it’s 3D rendering jobs, virtual workstations, desktop applications, content streaming, video encoding, or any other graphics-intensive workload, customers will have the power to deliver high-fidelity content and to build next generation graphics applications in the cloud.

COST-EFFECTIVE

G3 instances are fundamentally disrupting how customers deploy and provision workstations. Customers can co-locate their compute resources with large data sources, enabling them to further optimize their costs. Available across the world, G3 instances allow distributed teams across geographies to collaborate, and use their investments more efficiently.

Agility

With G3 instances, customers can spin up resources when required, and spin them down when their work is done. Coupled with AWS’ wide range of storage and data services, teams can build new experiences and deliver to anywhere in the world at any time.

Features

HIGH PERFORMANCE PROCESSING

G3 instances feature up to 64 vCPUs based on custom 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon E5 2686 v4 processors and 488 GiB of DRAM host memory. Backed by up to 4 NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs, with each GPU delivering up to 2,048 parallel processing cores and 8 GiB of GPU memory, G3 instances can enable demanding graphics applications like seismic visualization, computer-aided design, medical image processing, and virtual reality experiences in the cloud. G3 instances also feature a hardware encoder supporting up to 10 H.265 (HEVC) 1080p30 streams and up to 18 H.264 1080p30 streams.

SUPPORT FOR VIRTUAL WORKSTATIONS & VIRTUAL DESKTOP APPLICATIONS

G3 instances support OpenGL 4.5, DirectX 12.0, CUDA 8.0, and OpenCL 1.2. They are the first Amazon EC2 instances to support NVIDIA GRID Virtual Workstation capabilities with streaming support for four monitors each with up to 4K resolution (4096 x 2160 pixels). G3 instances also support GRID Virtual Application capabilities for virtual desktop applications and virtualization software, such as Citrix XenApp Essentials and VMware Horizon, enabling up to 25 concurrent users per GPU.

HIGH PERFORMANCE NETWORKING & STORAGE

Next generation Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) technology provides G3 instances with high throughput, low latency interfaces for networking and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). G3 instances offer up to 20 Gbps of network bandwidth and up to 14 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth to EBS.

Use Cases

Energy Exploration and Production

The increasing complexity in exploration and production (E&P) and overall reservoir management requires extremely fast data processing, visualization, and storage capabilities combined with strong data security to protect collected data. G3 instances offer the processing power and visualization capabilities to meet these needs.

Media and Entertainment

The media and entertainment industry can benefit greatly from G3 instances. Customers can use G3 instances for post-production and video playout/broadcast as well as video encoding and transcoding. In addition G3 instances can support AR/VR applications.

Desktop and Application Virtualization

G3 instances support GRID Virtual Application capabilities for virtual desktop applications and virtualization software like Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH), enabling up to 25 concurrent users per GPU.

Product Details

Name GPUs vCPU Memory (GiB) GPU Memory (GiB) Price/hr* (Linux) Price/hr* (Windows) 1-yr Reserved Instance Effective Hourly* (Linux) 3-yr Reserved Instance Effective Hourly* (Linux)
g3s.xlarge 1 4 30.5 8 $0.75
$0.93
$0.525 $0.405
g3.4xlarge 1 16 122 8 $1.14 $1.876 $0.741 $0.538
g3.8xlarge 2 32 244 16 $2.28 $3.752 $1.482 $1.076
g3.16xlarge 4 64 488 32 $4.56 $7.504 $2.964 $2.152

*Prices shown are for US East (Northern Virginia) AWS Region. Prices for 1-year and 3-year reserved instances are for "Partial Upfront" payment options or "No upfront" for instances without the Partial Upfront option.

Getting Started with EC2 G3 Instances

Using Amazon Machine Images

To get started, customers can use Windows and Linux AMIs or use a Windows AMI with pre-installed GRID driver. Visit NVIDIA GRID G3 AMIs for more information.  

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