Achieve 25% Better Compute Performance with AWS Graviton Processor

Overview

AWS Graviton processors are custom-built and designed by AWS to deliver the best price-performance for our cloud workloads. Graviton was launched in 2019, and we have three generations as of now. Graviton 3 is the latest processor which AWS introduced in reInvent 2021.

Graviton 2 processor performs better compared to the first generation of Graviton processors. It supports various general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, storage-optimized, and accelerated computing workloads.

Graviton 3 processors are the latest ones in the Graviton family of AWS. It provides 25% better compute performance, two times the high floating-point performance, and cryptographic workload performance compared to earlier versions of the Graviton processor. It is 3x faster compared to Graviton 2. Graviton 3 supports DDR5 memory type, which provides 50% more memory bandwidth compared to Graviton 2 processor, which has DDR4.

Benefits of using AWS Graviton

1. Cost-Effective: Graviton processors are based on Arm architecture, which is like System on Chip (SoC). It consumes less power, and it results in low cost.
2. Eco-System Support: It supports a Linux-based operating system. It includes Amazon Linux 2, SUSE, and RedHat.
3. Effective CPU Power: Graviton processor offers up to 3.45% higher performance.
4. General Purpose: Graviton processor helps us improve the efficiency of servers, micro-services, data storing processes, and cluster computing.
5. Networking: It offers enhanced C6gn network support and can boost up to 100Gbps network capabilities of Elastic Fabric Operator.

Working of Graviton3 Processor

All the 64 cores on the Graviton3 are in the center and then broke off the DDR5 memory controllers, including memory encryption and PCI-Express 5.0 peripheral controllers that separate them from the cores. The two PCI-Express 5.0 controllers at the bottom of the package and four DDR5 memory controllers, two on each side. Graviton3 is the first server chip to support DDR5 memory, and it also has 50 % more bandwidth than the DDR4 memory commonly used in servers today.

EC2 Instances powered by AWS Graviton Processors

General Purpose:

2. M6g, M6gd: Best price performance for general purpose workloads with balanced compute, memory, and networking and is powered by Graviton 2.
3. T4g: Best price performance for burstable general-purpose workloads and is powered by Graviton 2.

Compute Optimized:

3. C7g: Best price performance for compute-intensive workloads and is powered by Graviton 3.
4. C6g, C6gd, C6gn: The cost savings for compute and network-intensive workloads is powered by Graviton 2.

Memory Optimized:

2. R6g, R6gd: Best price performance for memory-intensive workloads and is powered by Graviton 2.
3. X2gd: Lowest cost per GiB of memory in Amazon EC2 and is powered by Graviton 2.

Storage Optimized:

2. Im4gn: Best price performance for storage-intensive workloads and is powered by Graviton 2.
3. Is4gen: The lowest cost per TB of SSD storage in Amazon EC2 is powered by Graviton 2.

Accelerated Computing:

2. G5g: Best price performance for Android game streaming and is powered by Graviton 2.

AWS Services that support Graviton

• AWS Cloud9
• AWS CodeCommit
• AWS CodeDeploy
• AWS CodePipiline
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• AWS System Manager
• Amazon Aurora
• Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon CodeBuild
• Amazon Corretto
• Amazon Elasticcache
• Amazon Elastic Container Registry
• Amazon Elastic Container Services
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services
• Amazon OpenSearch Service
• Amazon EMR
• Amazon FSx for Lustre
• Amazon Inspector
• Amazon Linux 2
• Amazon RDS
• AWS Lambda
• Amazon Neptune
• AWS Fargate
• Amazon MemoryDB
• Amazon DocumentDB

Availability:

1. M6g, C6g, and R6g are available in Northern California, Oregon, Ohio, Canada, Northern Virginia, Ireland, London, Europe, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
2. M6gd, C6gd, and R6gd are available in Oregon, Northern California, Ohio, Northern Virginia, Ireland, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
3. C6gn is available in Oregon, Ohio, Northern Virginia, Ireland, and Tokyo
4. T4g is available in Oregon, Northern California, Ohio, Canada, Northern Virginia, Ireland, London, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Mumbai, South America, Ningxia, Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney.
5. X2gd is available in Oregon, Ohio, Northern Virginia, and Ireland.

Consumers who use AWS Graviton are Ascend Money, Barracuda, Cadence, Cordial, Discovery, Epic Games, Formula 1, ParkMobile, and many more.

AWS Graviton vs Intel

AWS and Nvidia Collaboration

NVIDIA GPU-based instances were launched in back 2019. We have an EC2 G4 instance powered with Nvidia T4 GPUs and an EC2 P4d instance powered with Nvidia A100 GPUs.

EC2 P4d instances are deployed in hyperscale clusters called EC2 Ultra Clusters, and it is comprised of the highest performance computing, networking, and storage in the cloud it supports 400 Gbps instance networking, Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), and NVIDIA GPUDirect RDMA technology to help rapidly train ML models using scale-out and distributed techniques

Graviton3 Powered Instances

Pricing

Instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors can deliver up to 20% lower cost versus comparable x86 instances. Graviton2-based instances are custom built by AWS using 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores to deliver the best price-performance for our cloud workloads running in Amazon EC2. These instances can be found in the EC2 general purpose (M6g), compute-optimized (C6g), and memory-optimized (R6g) instance families.

Role of Graviton3 processor in Sustainability Pillar

AWS Well-Architected Framework has added a new pillar known as the sustainability pillar. The sustainability pillar challenges us to use less wasteful resources were possible to save the environment. Instances powered with Graviton3 processors are 50% fasters than Intel or AMD-based processors. It costs 20 % less and consumes 60% less power than Intel and AMD processors.

Conclusion

Graviton 2 supports a wide range of general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, storage-optimized, and accelerated computing workloads.

Graviton 3 processors are the latest ones in the Graviton family. It provides a much better compute performance, 2x the high floating-point cryptographic workload performance compared to earlier versions of the Graviton processor.

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If you have any queries regarding AWS Graviton, compute, or any other AWS services, drop a line below the comments section. I will get back to you at the earliest.

FAQs

Q: Is storage encryption supported on AWS Graviton 2 processors?

Ans: The AWS Graviton2 processor supports always-on 256-bit memory encryption for added security. The encryption key is securely generated within the host system, never leaves the host system, and is irreparably destroyed when the host restarts or shuts down. Storage Encryption does not support integration with AWS KMS, and customers are not allowed to bring their keys.

Q: What are the specifications of the 1st generation AWS Graviton processor?

Ans: The AWS Graviton processor is custom-designed by AWS and leverages Amazon’s extensive expertise in building platform solutions for large-scale cloud applications. These processors are based on a 64-bit Arm instruction set and feature an Arm Neoverse core designed by AWS and custom silicon. The core operates at a frequency of 2.3 GHz.

WRITTEN BY Rahul Kumar Sharma