Powered by new Graviton3 processors, AWS EC2 C7g instances are going to be a great match for compute-intensive workloads: HPC, batch processing, electronic design automation (EDA), media encoding, scientific modeling, ad serving, distributed analytics, and CPU-based machine learning inferencing.
Powered by new Graviton3 processors, AWS EC2 C7g instances are going to be a great match for compute-intensive workloads: HPC, batch processing, electronic design automation (EDA), media encoding, scientific modeling, ad serving, distributed analytics, and CPU-based machine learning inferencing.
AWS EC2 C7g Instances
The AWS team is still optimizing these instances, but it is clear that the Graviton3 is set to deliver amazing performance. In comparison to Graviton2, Graviton3 will deliver up to 25% more compute performance and up to twice as much floating-point and cryptographic performance. On the machine learning side, Graviton3 includes support for bfloat16 data and will deliver up to 3x better performance.
Graviton3 processors also include a new pointer authentication feature that is designed to improve security. Before return addresses are pushed onto the stack, they are first signed with a secret key and additional context information, including the current value of the stack pointer. When the signed addresses are popped off the stack, they are validated before being used. An exception is raised if the address is not valid, thereby blocking attacks that work by overwriting the stack contents with the address of harmful code. AWS is working with operating system and compiler developers to add more support for this feature. Contact AWS if this is of interest to you.
AWS EC2 C7g instances will be available in multiple sizes (including bare metal) and are the first in the cloud industry to be equipped with DDR5 memory. In addition to drawing less power, this memory delivers 50% higher bandwidth than the DDR4 memory used in the current generation of EC2 instances.
On the network side, C7g instances will offer up to 30 Gbps of network bandwidth and Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) support.
AWS Im4gn and Is4gen
Amazon AWS also introduced the two newest families of storage-optimized instances, Im4gn and Is4gen, powered by Graviton2 processors. Both instances offer up to 30TB of NVMe storage using AWS Nitro SSD devices that are custom-built by AWS. The AWS Nitro SSDs reduce I/O latency by up to 60% and also reduce latency variability by up to 75% when compared to the third generation of storage-optimized instances resulting in faster and more predictable performance for I/O-intensive EC2 workloads.
Im4gn instances are a great fit for applications that require large amounts of dense SSD storage and high compute performance but are not especially memory-intensive such as social games, session storage, chatbots, and search engines.
| Instance Name | vCPUs |
Memory | Local NVMe Storage (AWS Nitro SSD) |
Read Throughput (128 KB Blocks) |
EBS-Optimized Bandwidth | Network Bandwidth |
| im4gn.large | 2 | 8 GiB | 937 GB | 250 MB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| im4gn.xlarge | 4 | 16 GiB | 1.875 TB | 500 MB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| im4gn.2xlarge | 8 | 32 GiB | 3.75 TB | 1 GB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| im4gn.4xlarge | 16 | 64 GiB | 7.5 TB | 2 GB/s | 9.5 Gbps | 25 Gbps |
| im4gn.8xlarge | 32 | 128 GiB | 15 TB (2 x 7.5 TB) |
4 GB/s | 19 Gbps | 50 Gbps |
| im4gn.16xlarge | 64 | 256 GiB | 30 TB (4 x 7.5 TB) |
8 GB/s | 38 Gbps | 100 Gbps |
Im4gn instances provide up to 40% better price performance and up to 44% lower cost per TB of storage compared to I3 instances. The new instances are available in the AWS US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), and Europe (Ireland) Regions as On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plan, and Reserved Instances.
Is4gen instances are a great fit for applications that do large amounts of random I/O to large amounts of SSD storage. This includes shared file systems, stream processing, social media monitoring, and streaming platforms, all of which can use the increased storage density to retain more data locally. Here are the specs:
| Instance Name | vCPUs |
Memory | Local NVMe Storage (AWS Nitro SSD) |
Read Throughput (128 KB Blocks) |
EBS-Optimized Bandwidth | Network Bandwidth |
| is4gen.medium | 1 | 6 GiB | 937 GB | 250 MB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| is4gen.large | 2 | 12 GiB | 1.875 TB | 500 MB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| is4gen.xlarge | 4 | 24 GiB | 3.75 TB | 1 GB/s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| is4gen.2xlarge | 8 | 48 GiB | 7.5 TB | 2 GB /s | Up to 9.5 Gbps | Up to 25 Gbps |
| is4gen.4xlarge | 16 | 96 GiB | 15 TB (2 x 7.5 TB) |
4 GB/s | 9.5 Gbps | 25 Gbps |
| is4gen.8xlarge | 32 | 192 GiB | 30 TB (4 x 7.5 TB) |
8 GB/s | 19 Gbps | 50 Gbps |
Is4gen instances provide 15% lower cost per TB of storage and up to 48% better compute performance compared to I3en instances. The new instances are available in the AWS US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), and Europe (Ireland) Regions as On-Demand, Spot, Savings Plan, and Reserved Instances.
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