Amazon EC2 A1 Instances
Optimized cost and performance for scale-out workloads
Amazon EC2 A1 instances deliver significant cost savings for scale-out and Arm-based applications such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, and distributed data stores that are supported by the extensive Arm ecosystem. A1 instances are the first EC2 instances powered by AWS Graviton Processors that feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS. These instances will also appeal to developers, enthusiasts, and educators across the Arm developer community. Most architecture-agnostic applications that can run on Arm cores could also benefit from A1 instances.

Benefits
Flexibility and Choice
A1 instances add to the broadest and deepest selection of EC2 instances. Developers can now access instances with the Arm instruction set and experience the flexibility, security, reliability, and scalability of running on EC2. Familiar AWS and Amazon EC2 capabilities, such as EBS, Networking, and AMIs work seamlessly with A1 instances.
Lower Cost
A1 instances deliver significant cost saving for workloads that are supported by the extensive Arm ecosystem. These include general purpose workloads such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, and distributed data stores that that can be spread across multiple cores and can fit within the available A1 instance memory footprint.
Maximized Resource Efficiency
A1 instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor which delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance and security.
Key Features
Powered by AWS Graviton Processors
AWS Graviton Processors feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS delivering optimized performance and cost. AWS Graviton Processors are built exclusively for the cloud, utilizing AWS and Annapurna Labs' expertise in running hyperscale cloud platforms and cloud applications.
High Performance Networking and Storage
Next generation Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) and NVM Express (NVMe) technology provide A1 instances with high throughput, low latency bandwidth interfaces for networking and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).
Built on AWS Nitro System
The AWS Nitro System is a rich collection of building blocks that offloads many of the traditional virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and software to deliver high performance, high availability, and high security while also reducing virtualization overhead.
Product Details
Model | vCPUs | Memory (GiB) |
Instance Storage | Network Bandwidth (Gbps) |
EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
a1.medium | 1 | 2 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
a1.large | 2 | 4 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
a1.xlarge | 4 | 8 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
a1.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
a1.4xlarge | 16 | 32 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | 3,500 |
Blogs and Articles
Blog: EC2 Instances (A1) Powered by Arm-Based AWS Graviton Processors
Jeff Barr
Nov 26, 2018
Blog: AWS Designed Processor: Graviton
James Hamilton
Nov 27, 2018
Blog: Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM: Now supported on AWS
Scott Herold and Jon Masters
Nov 27, 2018
Blog: EC2 A1 Instance with AWS Graviton Processor: Easy Way to Save 40%
Tung Nguyen
Dec 16, 2018