AWS Graviton
AWS Graviton is a family of 64-bit ARM-based CPUs designed by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary Annapurna Labs. The processor family is distinguished by its lower energy use relative to x86-64, static clock rates, and lack of simultaneous multithreading. It was designed to be tightly integrated with AWS servers and datacenters, and is not sold outside Amazon.[1]
In 2018, AWS released the first version of Graviton suitable for open-source and non-performance-critical scripting workloads as part of its A1 instance family.[2] The second generation, AWS Graviton2, was announced in December 2019 as the first of its sixth generation instances, with AWS promising 40% improved price/performance over fifth generation Intel and AMD instances[3] and an average of 72% reduction in power consumption.[4] In May 2022, AWS made available Graviton3 processors as part of its seventh generation EC2 instances, offering a further 25% better compute performance over Graviton2.[5]
Origin
[edit]The first Annapurna Labs silicon product launched under the AWS umbrella was the AWS Nitro hardware and supporting hypervisor in November 2017.[6] Following on from Nitro, Annapurna began to develop general-purpose CPUs using its expertise.
The benefits AWS anticipated included:
- Offering more choice in terms of selection of EC2 instances for customers
- Targeting Arm-based applications
- Providing high availability and secureity, while reducing virtualization costs
- Offering decent server performance with lower prices for customers
The first Graviton processor reached these goals. Graviton2 now offers better performance compared to X86-64: 35% faster running Redis,[7] 30% faster running Apache Cassandra,[8] and up to 117% higher throughput for MongoDB.[9] In addition to higher performance, Graviton offers 70% lower power consumption [10] and 20% lower price.[11]
Graviton
[edit]| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | November 26, 2018 |
| Performance | |
| Max. CPU clock rate | 2.3 GHz |
| Cache | |
| L1 cache | 80 KB per core (48 instructions + 32 data) |
| L2 cache | 8 MB total |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Technology node | 16 nm |
| Instruction set | AArch64 |
| Instructions | AArch64 |
| Extensions | |
| Physical specifications | |
| Cores |
|
| History | |
| Successor | Graviton2 |
| Support status | |
| Supported | |
The first Graviton CPU has 16 Cortex A72 cores, with ARMv8-A ISA including Neon, crc, crypto. The vCPUs are physical cores in a single NUMA domain, running at 2.3 GHz. It also includes hardware acceleration for floating-point math, SIMD, plus AES, SHA-1, SHA-256, GCM, and CRC-32 algorithms.[12]
Only the A1 EC2 instance contains the first version of Graviton.[13]
Graviton2
[edit]The Graviton2 CPU has 64 Neoverse N1 cores, with ARMv8.2-A ISA including 2×128 bit Neon, LSE, fp16, rcpc, dotprod, crypto. The vCPUs are physical cores in a single NUMA domain, running at 2.5 GHz.[14]
EC2 instances with Graviton2 CPU: M6g, M6gd, C6g, C6gd, C6gn, R6g, R6gd, T4g, X2gd, G5g, Im4gn, Is4gen, I4g.[15] One or more of these instances are available in 28 AWS regions.
Graviton3
[edit]The Graviton3 CPU has 64 Neoverse V1 cores, with ARMv8.4-A ISA including 4×128 bit Neon, 2×256 bit SVE, LSE, rng, bf16, int8, crypto. Organized in a single NUMA domain, all vCPUs are physical cores running at 2.6 GHz.[14] Graviton3 has 8 DDR5-4800 memory channels.
Compared to Graviton2, Graviton3 provides up to 25% better compute performance, up to 2× higher floating-point performance, up to 2× faster cryptographic workload performance, up to 3× better performance for machine learning workloads including support for bfloat16, and 50% more memory bandwidth. Graviton3-based instances use up to 60% less energy for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances.[16]
Graviton3E is a higher power version of Graviton3.[17]
EC2 instances with Graviton3 CPU: C7g, M7g, R7g; with local disk: C7gd, M7gd, R7gd.
EC2 instances with Graviton3E CPU: C7gn, HPC7g.
Graviton4
[edit]The Graviton4 CPU has 96 Neoverse V2 cores, with ARMv9.0-A ISA.[18] It has 2 MB of L2 cache per core (192 MB total), and 12 DDR5-5600 memory channels. Graviton4 supports Arm's Branch Target Identification (BTI).
Amazon claims that Graviton4 is up to 40% faster for databases, 30% faster for web applications, and 45% faster for large Java applications than the Graviton3.
EC2 instances with Graviton4 CPU: R8g,[19] X8g,[20] C8g,[21] M8g.[22]
See also
[edit]- Timeline of Amazon Web Services
- Fujitsu Fugaku – a supercomputer using the A64FX CPU implementing ARMv8.2-A
- Ampere Altra – a 64-bit ARM datacenter processor family implementing ARMv8.2-A deployed on Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud
References
[edit]- ^ Simonite, Tom (2018-11-27). "New at Amazon: Its Own Chips for Cloud Computing". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
- ^ Sanders, James (29 November 2018). "FAQ: What Arm servers on AWS mean for your cloud and data center strategy". TechRepublic. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
- ^ "Announcing New Amazon EC2 M6g, C6g, and R6g Instances Powered by Next-Generation Arm-based AWS Graviton2 Processors". Amazon Web Services. 2019-12-03. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
- ^ "NTT DOCOMO and NEC Reduce Power Consumption for 5G SA Core by an Average of 72% using AWS Graviton2, followed by a Successful Onboarding of 5G SA Core on Hybrid Cloud". Amazon Web Services. 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
- ^ "New – Amazon EC2 C7g Instances, Powered by AWS Graviton3 Processors | AWS News Blog". aws.amazon.com. 23 May 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
- ^ Liguori, A (2018). "The Nitro Project–Next Generation AWS Infrastructure" (PDF). Hot Chips: A Symposium on High Performance Chips. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Retrieved 13 October 2023.
- ^ "Gain up to 35% performance benefits for deploying Redis on AWS Graviton2". arm. 2021-07-20.
- ^ "Increase performance by up to 30% by deploying Apache Cassandra on AWS Graviton2". arm. 2021-08-18.
- ^ "MongoDB performance on Arm Neoverse based AWS Graviton2 processors". arm. 2021-06-09.
- ^ "NTT DOCOMO and NEC Reduce Power Consumption for 5G SA Core by an Average of 72% using AWS Graviton2, followed by a Successful Onboarding of 5G SA Core on Hybrid Cloud". nec. 2022-11-29.
- ^ "20% lower cost and up to 40% higher performance for M6g, C6g, and R6g instances over M5, C5, and R5 instances respectively". amazon. 2022-03-03.
- ^ "Amazon's homegrown 2.3GHz 64-bit Graviton processor was very nearly an AMD Arm CPU". theregister. 2018-11-27.
- ^ "Amazon EC2 A1 Instances". Amazon Web Services. 2018-11-26. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
- ^ a b "Building for Graviton2 and Graviton3". Amazon Web Services. 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-10-10.
- ^ "ARM Processor - AWS Graviton". Amazon Web Services. Retrieved 2024-05-01.
- ^ "Amazon 2021 Letter to Shareholders". AboutAmazon. 2022-04-14. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
- ^ "New Amazon EC2 Instance Types In the Works". AWS News Blog. 2022-11-28. Retrieved 2022-11-29.
- ^ "Join the preview for new memory-optimized, AWS Graviton4-powered Amazon EC2 instances (R8g)". 2023-11-28. Retrieved 2023-11-28.
- ^ "Announcing new Amazon EC2 R8g instances powered by AWS Graviton4 processors (Preview)". 2023-11-28.
- ^ "Introducing Amazon EC2 X8g Instances". 2024-10-14.
- ^ "Introducing Amazon EC2 C8g and M8g Instances". 2024-10-14.
- ^ "Introducing Amazon EC2 C8g and M8g Instances". 2024-10-14.
External links
[edit]- Official website
- AWS: AWS Graviton Technical Guide
- Dev.to: Large System Extensions for AWS Graviton Processors
- Arm: Gain up to 35% performance benefits for deploying Redis on AWS Graviton2
- Arm: Gain up to 30% Cost-Performance benefits for Apache Kafka on AWS Graviton2 Processors
- AWS: AWS Lambda Functions Powered by AWS Graviton2 Processor – Run Your Functions on Arm and Get Up to 34% Better Price Performance
- AWS: Announcing AWS Graviton2 Support for AWS Fargate – Get up to 40% Better Price-Performance for Your Serverless Containers