Compute for any workload

Regardless if you are migrating apps from on-premises or building them natively in the cloud, you can benefit from EC2 instances built on the AWS Nitro System. The AWS Nitro System enables AWS to innovate faster, further reduce cost for our customers, and deliver added benefits like increased security and new instance types. AWS has completely re-imagined our virtualization infrastructure. Traditionally, hypervisors protect the physical hardware and bios, virtualize the CPU, storage, networking, and provide a rich set of management capabilities. With the Nitro System, we are able to break apart those functions, offload them to dedicated hardware and software, and reduce our costs by delivering all of the resources of a server to customers.

The Nitro System is comprised of three main parts: The Nitro Cards, the Nitro Security Chip, and the Nitro Hypervisor. The Nitro Cards are a family of cards that offloads and accelerates IO for functions including VPC, EBS, and Instance Storage, ultimately increasing overall system performance. The Nitro Security Chip enables the most secure cloud platform with a minimized attack surface as virtualization and security functions are offloaded to dedicated hardware and software. Additionally, a locked down security model prohibits all administrative access, including those of Amazon employees, eliminating the possibility of human error and tampering. The Nitro Hypervisor is a lightweight hypervisor that manages memory and CPU allocation and delivers performance that is indistinguishable from bare metal.