Amazon EC2 X2gd instances

Lowest cost per GiB of memory in Amazon EC2 for memory-intensive applications

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) X2gd instances are the next generation of memory-optimized instances powered by AWS-designed, Arm-based AWS Graviton2 processors. They deliver up to 55% better price performance compared to current generation x86-based X1 instances. They also offer twice the memory per vCPU compared to R6g/R5 instances and the lowest cost per GiB of memory in Amazon EC2. The higher performance and additional memory of X2gd instances enable customers to run memory-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases (Redis, Memcached), relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL), electronic design automation (EDA) workloads, real-time analytics, and real-time caching servers. Additionally, as more customers run containers on AWS for application portability and infrastructure efficiency, X2gd instances make it possible for them to bundle more memory-intensive containerized applications on a single instance to optimize their compute infrastructure.

X2gd instances include local NVMe-based SSD block-level storage for applications that need high-speed, low latency access to data sets for caching and real-time analytics.

Free Trial: Try Amazon EC2 t4g.small instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors free for up to 750 hours / month until Dec 31st 2023. Refer to the FAQ for additional details.

Benefits

High performance and lowest cost per GiB of memory

X2gd instances provide up to 55% better price performance compared to current generation x86-based X1 instances, and also offer the lowest cost per GiB of memory in Amazon EC2 for memory-intensive applications built on open-source software utilizing Linux distributions.

Flexibility and choice

X2gd instances add to the broadest and deepest selection of EC2 instances and enable customers to run a broad set of memory-intensive workloads such as open-source databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data analytics. Developers can also use X2gd instances to consolidate more memory-intensive containerized workloads on a single instance with the high memory available per vCPU.

Enhanced security and maximized resource efficiency

X2gd instances are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and built on the AWS Nitro System. AWS Graviton2 processors feature always-on 256-bit DRAM encryption and 50% faster per core encryption performance compared to first-generation AWS Graviton. The AWS Nitro System is 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. X2gd instances also support encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) storage volumes.

Extensive ecosystem support

AWS Graviton2-based EC2 instances are supported by popular Linux operating systems including Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Many popular applications and services from AWS and independent software vendors (ISVs) also support AWS Graviton2-based instances, including Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Amazon CodeBuild, Amazon CodeCommit, Amazon CodePipeline, Amazon CodeDeploy, Amazon CloudWatch, Crowdstrike, Datadog, Docker, Drone, Dynatrace, GitLab, Jenkins, NGINX, Qualys, Rancher, Rapid7, Tenable, and TravisCI.

Features

Powered by AWS Graviton2 processors

AWS Graviton2 Processors are based on 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS for optimized performance and cost. AWS Graviton2 Processors deliver 7x more performance, 4x more compute cores, 5x faster memory, and 2x larger caches versus first-generation AWS Graviton Processors.

High performance networking and storage

Next-generation Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) and NVM Express (NVMe) technology provide X2gd instances with high throughput, low latency interfaces for networking and Amazon EBS. X2gd instances include NVMe SSD local instance storage.

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.

Customer Testimonials

Cadence

Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. 

“Cadence’s computational software heritage enables customers to turn electronic design concepts into reality across a variety of end markets, including hyperscale computing, mobile, and 5G communications. We have successfully run our verification and library characterization products on the AWS Graviton2-based R6g memory optimized instances, delivering compelling price-performance benefits. The new Graviton2-based X2g instances have a much larger memory footprint, which will allow for more efficient runs and enable even more memory-intensive EDA workloads.”

Nimish Modi, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Business Development at Cadence

SmugMug

SmugMug is a paid image sharing service, image hosting service, and online video platform on which users can upload photos and videos. The company facilitates the sale of digital and print media for amateur and professional photographers. 

“SmugMug operates two very large online photo platforms, SmugMug and Flickr, enabling more than 100 million members to safely store, search, share, and sell tens of billions of photos. Last year we were able to transition our caching servers to r6gd.8xlarge instances with a simple recompile and are enjoying a 33% price benefit and improved latency. The large memory footprint of the new X2gd instances allows us to consolidate our caching on instances that closely match our workload, lowering our cost per instance and cost per GB of RAM by an additional 28%.”

Andrew Shieh, Director of Operations at SmugMug

Synopsys

As an S&P 500 company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of application security testing tools and services. 

“Synopsys’ customers are increasingly leveraging cloud for scaling and accelerating applications across our portfolio for system-on-chip (SoC) design processes, including verification, library characterization, analog, and digital design implementation flows. Our anchor products, such as Synopsys’ VCS functional verification solution, are optimized to use advances in hardware performance and memory introduced in AWS’s Graviton2-based X2gd instances, enabling our customers to accelerate SoC verification and design.”

Deirdre Hanford, Chief Security Officer, Synopsys

Annapurna Labs

Annapurna Labs, an Amazon company, is the chip development arm of AWS responsible for designing the AWS Nitro System, AWS Graviton processors, AWS Inferentia chips, and AWS Trainium chips. 

“At Annapurna Labs, we have been running almost all of our chip simulations and verification up till now on Graviton2-based R6g instances. With the new X2gd instances, we are able to double the number of full chip and cluster level simulations for same instance size, allowing us to do twice the output while reduce costs at the same time."

Nafea Bshara, Vice President, and Distinguished Engineer at Annapurna Labs

Arm logo
“Technology has become ubiquitous in all industries, driving the need for more compute products in less time while simultaneously using fewer resources to keep costs low. The design, verification, and implementation of silicon IP are the most critical phases between idea and a finished product produced in volume, and we have measured a performance uplift of 45% on EDA workloads when running on Arm-based Graviton2-powered X2gd cloud instances compared to previous generation X1 instances.”

Mark Galbraith, Head of Productivity Engineering, Arm

Product Details

Instance Size

vCPU

Memory (GiB)

Instance Storage (GB)

Network Bandwidth (Gbps)

EBS Bandwidth (Gbps)

x2gd.medium

1

16

1 x 59 NVMe SSD

Up to 10

Up to 4.75

x2gd.large

2

32

1 x 118 NVMe SSD

Up to 10

Up to 4.75

x2gd.xlarge

4

64

1 x 237 NVMe SSD

Up to 10

Up to 4.75

x2gd.2xlarge

8

128

1 x 475 NVMe SSD

Up to 10

Up to 4.75

x2gd.4xlarge

16

256

1 x 950 NVMe SSD

Up to 10

4.75

x2gd.8xlarge

32

512

1 x 1900 NVMe SSD

12

9.5

x2gd.12xlarge

48

768

2 x 1425 NVMe SSD

20

14.25

x2gd.16xlarge

64

1,024

2 x 1900 NVMe SSD

25

19

x2gd.metal

64

1,024

2 x 1900 NVMe SSD

25

19

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