AWS has announced the general availability of Amazon EC2 R8g instances, which use AWS Graviton4 processors. These instances have been available in preview since November 2023 and are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data analytics.
The AWS Graviton4 inside the R8g instances is the latest generation of processors designed by the company specifically for cloud computing. These processors are built using ARM architecture, known for its high performance and energy efficiency.
Esra Kayabali, a senior solutions architect at AWS, wrote:
If you are looking for more energy-efficient compute options to help you reduce your carbon footprint and achieve your sustainability goals, R8g instances provide the best energy efficiency for memory-intensive workloads in EC2.
According to the company AWS, Graviton4-based Amazon EC2 instances offer up to 3x more vCPU and memory than Graviton3-based instances, with speeds up to 30% faster for web applications, 40% faster for databases, and 45% faster for large Java applications. The R8g instances come in 12 sizes, including two bare metal sizes, and offer enhanced networking bandwidth of up to 50 Gbps and up to 40 Gbps to Amazon EBS. Elastic Fiber Adapter (EFA) networking support is available on select sizes, and Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) Express support is offered on instance sizes larger than 12xlarge.
Furthermore, they are built on the AWS Nitro System to enhance performance and security by offloading CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software.
The R8g instances are ideal for all Linux-based workloads, including containerized and micro-services-based applications. These applications can be built using Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS, Amazon ECR, Kubernetes, Docker, and popular programming languages like C/C++, Rust, Go, Java, Python, .NET Core, Node.js, Ruby, and PHP.
The R8g instances are part of the memory-optimized instance family in Amazon EC2, including R5, R6g, and R7g instances. The main differences among these instances are the processor, memory, and instance size.
Ayush Jain, an analyst at TechInsights, wrote in a LinkedIn post:
His colleague Owen Rogers ran a series of simple performance benchmarks on AWS’s r6g.large, r7g.large, and r8g. large EC2 instances, which are based on Graviton 2, 3, and 4 CPUs, respectively.
Broadly, the benchmark results show that AWS continues to strengthen the Graviton momentum while maintaining a healthy balance between performance and price.
Currently, the R8g instances are available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Frankfurt). Users can purchase R8g instances as Reserved Instances, On-Demand, Spot Instances, and via Savings Plans. More details on pricing are available on the EC2 pricing page.
