Amazon EC2 Instance Update – Faster Processors and More Memory

Last month I told you about the Nitro system and explained how it will allow us to broaden the selection of EC2 instances and to pick up the pace as we do so, with an ever-broadening selection of compute, storage, memory, and networking options. This will allow us to give you access to the latest technology very quickly, giving you the ability to choose the instance type that is the best match for your applications.

Today, I would like to tell you about three new instance types that are in the works and that will be available soon:

z1d – Compute-intensive instances running at up to 4.0 GHz, powered by sustained all-core Turbo Boost. They are ideal for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and relational database workloads, and are also a great fit for several kinds of HPC workloads.

R5 – Memory-optimized instances running at up to 3.1 GHz powered by sustained all-core Turbo Boost, with up to 50% more vCPUs and 60% more memory than R4 instances.

R5d – Memory-optimized instances equipped with local NVMe storage (up to 3.6 TB for the largest R5d instance), and will be available in the same sizes and with the same specs as the R5 instances.

We are also planning to launch R5 Bare Metal, R5d Bare Metal, and z1d Bare Metal instances. As is the case with the existing i3.metal instances, you will be able to access low-level hardware features and to run applications that are not licensed or supported in virtualized environments.

z1d Instances
The z1d instances are designed for applications that can benefit from extremely high per-core performance. These include:

Electronic Design Automation – As chips become smaller and denser, the amount of compute power needed to design and verify the chips increases non-linearly. Semiconductor customers deploy jobs that span thousands of cores; having access to faster cores reduces turnaround time for each job and can also lead to a measurable reduction in software licensing costs.

HPC – In the financial services world, jobs that run analyses or compute risks also benefit from faster cores. Manufacturing organizations can run their Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and simulation jobs to completion more quickly.

Relational Database – CPU-bound workloads that run on a database that “features” high per-core license fees will enjoy both cost and performance benefits.

z1d instances use custom Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable Processors running at up to 4.0 GHz, powered by sustained all-core Turbo Boost. They will be available in 6 sizes, with up to 48 vCPUs, 384 GiB of memory, and 1.8 TB of local NVMe storage. On the network side, they feature ENA networking that will deliver up to 25 Gbps of bandwidth, and are EBS-Optimized by default for up to 14 Gbps of bandwidth. As usual, you can launch them in a Cluster Placement Group to increase throughput and reduce latency. Here are the sizes and specs:

The instances are HVM and VPC-only, and you will need to use an AMI with the appropriate ENA and NVMe drivers. Any AMI that runs on C5 or M5 instances will also run on z1d instances.

R5 Instances
Building on the earlier generations of memory-intensive instance types (M2, CR1, R3, and R4), the R5 instances are designed to support high-performance databases, distributed in-memory caches, in-memory analytics, and big data analytics. They use custom Intel^® Xeon^® Platinum 8000 Series (Skylake-SP) processors running at up to 3.1 GHz, again powered by sustained all-core Turbo Boost. The instances will be available in 6 sizes, with up to 96 vCPUs and 768 GiB of memory. Like the Z1d instances, they feature ENA networking and are EBS-Optimized by default, and can be launched in Placement Groups. Here are the sizes and specs:

Once again, the instances are HVM and VPC-only, and you will need to use an AMI with the appropriate ENA and NVMe drivers.

Learn More
The new EC2 instances announced today highlight our plan to continue innovating in order to better meet your needs! I’ll share additional information as soon as it is available.

— Jeff;