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Today, we’re announcing general availability of the new eighth generation, memory optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) R8i and R8i-flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors, available only on AWS. They deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud. These instances deliver up to 15 percent better price performance, 20 percent higher performance, and 2.5 times more memory throughput compared to previous generation instances.
With these improvements, R8i and R8i-flex instances are ideal for a variety of memory intensive workloads such as SQL and NoSQL databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches (Memcached and Redis), in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, and real-time big data analytics (Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark clusters). For a majority of the workloads that don’t fully utilize the compute resources, the R8i-flex instances are a great first choice to achieve an additional 5 percent better price performance and 5 percent lower prices.
Improvements made to both instances compared to their predecessors
In terms of performance, R8i and R8i-flex instances offer 20 percent better performance than R7i instances, with even higher gains for specific workloads. These instances are up to 30 percent faster for PostgreSQL databases, up to 60 percent faster for NGINX web applications, and up to 40 percent faster for AI deep learning recommendation models compared to previous generation R7i instances, with sustained all-core turbo frequency now reaching 3.9 GHz (compared to 3.2 GHz in the previous generation). They also feature a 4.6x larger L3 cache and significantly better memory throughput, offering 2.5 times higher memory bandwidth than the seventh generation. With this higher performance across all the vectors, you can run a greater number of workloads while keeping costs down.
R8i instances now scale up to 96xlarge with up to 384 vCPUs and 3TB memory (versus 48xlarge sizes in the seventh generation), helping you to scale up database applications. R8i instances are SAP certified to deliver 142,100 aSAPS, which is highest among all comparable machines in on premises and cloud environments, delivering exceptional performance for your mission-critical SAP workloads. R8i-flex instances offer the most common sizes, from large to 16xlarge, and are a great first choice for applications that don’t fully utilize all compute resources. Both R8i and R8i-flex instances use the latest sixth generation AWS Nitro Cards, delivering up to two times more network and Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) bandwidth compared to the previous generation, which greatly improves network throughput for workloads handling small packets, such as web, application, and gaming servers.
R8i and R8i-flex instances also support bandwidth configuration with 25 percent allocation adjustments between network and Amazon EBS bandwidth, enabling better database performance, query processing, and logging speeds. Additional enhancements include FP16 datatype support for Intel AMX to support workloads such as deep learning training and inference and other artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications.
The specs for the R8i instances are as follows.
| Instance size |
vCPUs |
Memory (GiB) |
Network bandwidth (Gbps) |
EBS bandwidth (Gbps) |
| r8i.large | 2 | 16 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| r8i.xlarge | 4 | 32 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| r8i.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| r8i.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| r8i.8xlarge | 32 | 256 | 15 | 10 |
| r8i.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | 22.5 | 15 |
| r8i.16xlarge | 64 | 512 | 30 | 20 |
| r8i.24xlarge | 96 | 768 | 40 | 30 |
| r8i.32xlarge | 128 | 1024 | 50 | 40 |
| r8i.48xlarge | 192 | 1536 | 75 | 60 |
| r8i.96xlarge | 384 | 3072 | 100 | 80 |
| r8i.metal-48xl | 192 | 1536 | 75 | 60 |
| r8i.metal-96xl | 384 | 3072 | 100 | 80 |
The specs for the R8i-flex instances are as follows.
| Instance size |
vCPUs |
Memory (GiB) |
Network bandwidth (Gbps) |
EBS bandwidth (Gbps) |
| r8i-flex.large | 2 | 16 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| r8i-flex.xlarge | 4 | 32 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| r8i-flex.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| r8i-flex.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| r8i-flex.8xlarge | 32 | 256 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| r8i-flex.12xlarge | 48 | 384 | Up to 22.5 | Up to 15 |
| r8i-flex.16xlarge | 64 | 512 | Up to 30 | Up to 20 |
When to use the R8i-flex instances
As stated earlier, R8i-flex instances are more affordable versions of the R8i instances, offering up to 5 percent better price performance at 5 percent lower prices. They’re designed for workloads that benefit from the latest generation performance but don’t fully use all compute resources. These instances can reach up to the full CPU performance 95 percent of the time and work well for in-memory databases, distributed web scale cache stores, mid-size in-memory analytics, real-time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications. R8i instances are recommended for more demanding workloads that need sustained high CPU, network, or EBS performance such as analytics, databases, enterprise applications, and web scale in-memory caches.
Available now
R8i and R8i-flex instances are available today in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain) AWS Regions. As usual with Amazon EC2, you pay only for what you use. For more information, refer to Amazon EC2 Pricing. Check out the full collection of memory optimized instances to help you start migrating your applications.
To learn more, visit our Amazon EC2 R8i instances page and Amazon EC2 R8i-flex instances page. Send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.
– Veliswa
