Amazon launches EC2 instances based on its own ARM processor

Amazon has announced instances powered by its proprietary AWS Graviton processors. Those processors are built around 64bit cores that Amazon calls Neoverse cores.

According to Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS, Amazon began designing its own ARM processors for scalable, low-cost workloads several years ago. Plans for its own chips began in 2015, when Amazon acquired Israeli chipmaker Annapurna Labs. Amazon started supplying ARM chips from that subsidiary at the beginning of 2016, then for network equipment, but the company now offers instances based on the chips for its EC2 cloud service.

These are five EC2 A1 instances with virtual machines with 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 AWS Graviton processors. Other than that it concerns Neoverse 64bit ARM cores, Amazon does not provide details about the chips. The instances are based on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware for EC2 and a lightweight hypervisor. The EC2 A1 instances are initially available in Amazon regions in the eastern and western US and Europe.

According to Amazon, the instances are suitable for web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, distributed data stores and development environments. “If you mostly use open source packages from your favorite Linux distribution or build your own applications from source, we encourage you to try the new A1 instances,” Amazon said.