Amazon Web Services Inc. has launched a new family of cloud instances that run on Advanced Micro Devices Inc. processors and target computationally intensive workloads such as analytics applications.

The instances, which became available under the C5a name Thursday, are the first from AWS to use AMD’s second-generation Epyc Rome processors. The chips are based on a seven-nanometer architecture that provides 23% more instructions per clock than the first generation.

AWS first started offering AMD-based instance options to customers in 2018, the year the chipmaker launched the Epyc line. The processor family has helped AMD win share from market leader Intel Corp. in the server chip market and ink several high-profile cloud deals. Besides AWS, the chipmaker’s silicon can also be found in the competing cloud platforms of Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC.

The Epyc Rome chips powering the C5a instance family have a top frequency of 3.3-gigahertz. Channy Yun, principal developer advocate at AWS, wrote in  blog post that the cloud giant is using a custom processor design. The instances come in eight sizes that have two to 96 vCPUs, a unit of computing power on AWS that usually corresponds to one thread in a physical processor core.

The other core specifications also vary by instance. The amount of memory starts from 2 gibibytes in the entry-level C5a onfiguration and goes up to 196 gibibytes in the flagship 96 vCPU variant. Network bandwidth is either 10 or 20 gigabits per second.

C5a instances “provide high performance processing at 10% lower cost over comparable instances,” Yun wrote. “C5a instances are ideal for a broad set of compute-intensive workloads including batch processing, distributed analytics, data transformations, log analysis, and web applications.”

“With the new Amazon EC2 C5a instances, we are strategically expanding our presence and capabilities with AWS,” Forrest Norrod, the head of AMD’s data center and embedded computing businesses, added in a statement. “Even more importantly, together we are helping to continuously improve the end user cloud experience.”

AWS’ growing use of AMD chips is part of a broader strategy the provider is pursuing to expand the number and type of processors in its cloud. The Amazon.com subsidiary has also developed its own chip, the Graviton2, that power the M6g instance family it launched last month. The Graviton2 is based on an Arm Ltd. design and provides seven times the performance of Amazon’s first-generation Graviton chip with four times as many cores. 

Photo: AWS