Posted On: Nov 22, 2021
Starting today, Amazon Neptune announced the general availability of general-purpose T4g and memory-optimized R6g database instances powered by the AWS Graviton2 processor. AWS Graviton2-based instances deliver up to 40% better price performance over comparable current generation x86-based instances for a variety of workloads. Customers running graph workloads using Apache TinkerPop Gremlin, openCypher, or W3C SPARQL 1.1 query languages can expect to see significant improvements in query latency at a lower cost in comparison to x86-based instances of equivalent instance size.
AWS Graviton2 processors are custom built by Amazon Web Services using 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores to deliver several performance optimizations over first-generation AWS Graviton processors. This includes 7x the performance, 4x the number of compute cores, and 5x faster memory. Additionally, the AWS Graviton2 processors feature always-on fully encrypted DDR4 memory and 50% faster per core encryption performance. Customers can provision low-cost burstable performance workloads using the new T4g instance, ideal for development and testing use cases. The memory-optimized R6g instance provides up to 64 vCPUs, 25 Gbps of enhanced networking, and 19 Gbps of EBS bandwidth, ideal for production database workloads. Both instance types are part of the AWS Nitro System, a collection of AWS-designed hardware and software innovations that streamline the delivery of isolated multi-tenancy, private networking, and fast local storage.
You can launch Graviton2 T4g and R6g Neptune DB clusters using the AWS Management Console or using the AWS CLI. Upgrading a Neptune DB cluster to Graviton2 requires a simple instance type modification for Neptune engine version 1.1.0.0 and higher, using the same steps as any other instance modification. Your applications will continue to work as normal and you will not have to port application code. For more details on how to modify the instance type, see Amazon Neptune User Guide. For more information on pricing and regional availability, refer to the Amazon Neptune pricing page.