AWS Unveils R8i Instances Powered by Custom-Enhanced Intel Xeon 6 Processors

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has officially announced the launch of its eighth-generation memory-optimized EC2 instances, the R8i and R8i-flex. This launch marks a significant milestone in the ongoing collaboration between AWS and Intel, as these new instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available exclusively on the AWS platform, promising to deliver top-tier performance and the fastest memory bandwidth for demanding workloads.

This development follows a partnership announcement made last year, where Intel and AWS revealed plans for a foundry collaboration on the Intel 18A node. A key part of that agreement was Intel's commitment to supply AWS with custom-designed Xeon 6 processors manufactured using the Intel 3 process, a promise that has now come to fruition with the R8i series.

The custom Intel Xeon 6 processors at the heart of the R8i and R8i-flex instances boast impressive specifications. According to AWS, these chips feature a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz and support for high-speed 7200 MT/s DDR5 memory. Furthermore, the R8i instances are highly scalable, offering configurations with up to 384 vCPUs, making them ideal for large-scale, memory-intensive applications.

Industry analysis suggests that these new instances are likely based on a dual-socket configuration of the 96-core Intel Xeon 6900P Performance-core processors, also known by the codename "Granite Rapids-AP." This speculation is based on common cloud architecture, where one vCPU typically corresponds to one physical processor thread, and the memory-optimized nature of the R8i family, which benefits from high core counts and memory channels available in dual-socket systems.

What truly sets the AWS offering apart is the "custom-enhanced" nature of these processors. For comparison, the standard 96-core "Granite Rapids-AP" CPUs listed on Intel's official website (such as the Xeon 6972P and 6952P) have a maximum all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz and support for 6400 MT/s RDIMM memory. The custom model used by AWS clearly surpasses these specifications with its higher clock speeds and faster memory support, highlighting the deep engineering collaboration between the two tech giants.

In conclusion, the launch of the R8i instances represents a significant advancement in cloud infrastructure. By leveraging custom-built Intel silicon, AWS is providing its customers with a powerful, optimized platform tailored for the most demanding database, in-memory caching, and big data analytics workloads. This move underscores a growing trend of cloud providers co-designing hardware to unlock new levels of performance and efficiency.

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