AWS for Games Blog
AWS announces AMD EPYC™ processor-based instance support for Amazon GameLift
Today, we are excited to announce a collaboration with AMD that provides instance support for Amazon GameLift. An AWS managed service, GameLift enables developers to deploy, operate, and scale dedicated servers in the cloud for multiplayer games. Whether it’s creating a 200+ player battle royale game with Large Match Support or automatically adapting server capacity with player traffic using Autoscaling, GameLift leverages the power and reliability of AWS to provide seamless gameplay experiences for players worldwide. With this update, GameLift adds AMD EPYC instance families allowing game developers more server types to choose, while still delivering the same low-cost, low-latency player experience.
Since 2016, some of the largest game companies in the world, including Ubisoft, Final Strike, and Behaviour Interactive have trusted GameLift to deliver the lowest latency possible and increased cost savings. Over the years, we have continued to gather customer feedback, including how to make GameLift an even better alternative to on-premises deployments. Cost-savings and low latency were already a given—but increased flexibility was a common theme. Now with AMD instance support, GameLift gives you as a developer the choice and flexibility of selecting a new instance type that works best for you.
Developers can now use C5a, M5a, and R5a instances powered by AMD EPYC™ processors. Specifically, the C5a instances deliver leading x86 price-performance through a combination of high-performance processing with up to 10% lower cost over comparable instances. Without modifying your game server code, you can support the same number of players while benefiting from the cost savings. These new instances are available in the following 14 AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon and N. California), Central Canada (Montreal), South America (Sao Paulo), EU Central (Frankfurt), EU West (London and Ireland), Asia Pacific South (Mumbai), Asia Pacific Northeast (Seoul and Tokyo), and Asia Pacific Southeast (Singapore and Sydney). Instances supported include: c5a.large, c5a.xlarge, c5a.4xlarge, c5a.8xlarge, m5a.large, m5a.xlarge, m5a.2xlarge, m5a.4xlarge, m5a.8xlarge, m5a.12xlarge, m5a.16xlarge, m5a.24xlarge, r5a.large, r5a.xlarge, r5a.2xlarge, r5a.4xlarge, r5a.8xlarge, r5a.12xlarge, r5a.16xlarge, r5a.24xlarge.
“Working together with AMD provides game developers more flexibility in adopting GameLift’s low-cost servers, while directing players to instances that create reliable, consistent player experiences,” said Vatsal Bhardwaj, General Manager, AWS Game Tech services. “Game developers now have even more choices for globally deploying and operating scalable cloud servers for online multiplayer games, all the while benefiting from high performance instance types with up to 10% lower costs over comparable instances.”
Since AMD EPYC processors are based on the x86 architecture, your game build can remain unchanged. To get started using AMD instances for games that are already running on GameLift, simply select one of the c5a, m5a, or r5a instances when creating your GameLift Fleet from the Console UI or CLI. When selecting an Instance type, you would simply use a C5a instance type and appropriate size based on an existing fleet. Once your fleet is created, you can add that fleet to an existing Queue, then begin using alongside or replace existing fleets. Once performance is verified, you can rollout AMD instance based GameLift fleets to your regions and scale down your existing fleets to complete the migration to these AMD based instance types.
Doug Barnes, Founder & CTO at Final Strike stated, “Now with AMD instance support, Amazon GameLift gives us more flexibility to select instances that’s best for our workloads and save even more on performance costs, while enabling us to deliver low-latency gameplay experiences to our players.”
“AMD EPYC processors provide AWS and GameLift customers with high-performance capabilities for workloads that need access to reduced latency, core scaling and compute bound applications,” said Raghu Nambiar, corporate vice president, Data Center Ecosystem, AMD. “We’re excited to work with GameLift and offer AMD EPYC based AWS instances to their customers, so they can take advantage of the EPYC processor’s performance and price-performance capabilities.”
Check out AMD’s re:Invent demo session “Intro to AMD EPYC™ on Amazon EC2” to learn more and see what’s coming in 2021. Register for re:Invent to join one of the following session times:
- December 2: 12:45pm – 1:45pm PST
- December 3: 2:45pm – 3:45pm PST
- December 16: 11:45am – 12:45pm PST
- December 17: 12:45pm – 1:45pm PST
In the meantime, we would love to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this update and what features you’d like to see in the future. Connect with us on the forums or through the usual social media channels.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, EPYC and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.