AWS recently announced the general availability (GA) of compute-optimized C8i and C8i-flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors, sutitable for running compute-intensive workloads, such as web servers, caching, and Apache Kafka, ElasticSearch, batch processing, distributed analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding.
The release of C8i and C8i-flex is another addition to Amazon EC2’s instances portfolio, alongside the recent release of the memory-optimized R8i and R8i-flex instances and the general-purpose M8i and M8i-flex instances. These instances are a follow-up to the C7i and C7i from last year and, according to the company, are 60 percent faster for NGINX web applications, up to 40 percent faster for AI deep learning recommendation models, and 35 percent faster for Memcached stores.
The C8i instances provide up to 384 vCPUs and 768 GiB of memory, including bare-metal instances that offer dedicated access to the underlying physical hardware suited for running compute-intensive workloads. At the same time, the C8i-flex instances are a lower-cost variant of the C8i instances, with 5 percent better price performance at 5 percent lower prices, achieving 95 percent of full CPU performance 95 percent of the time while not fully utilizing all compute resources.
(Source: AWS News Blog)
Commenting on the new option, the DevOpsChat community on LinkedIn noted:
With the introduction of C8i Flex, AWS provides even more flexibility for users to optimize costs according to their workloads. This innovative instance type allows developers to leverage a range of additional resources, adjusting CPU and memory requirements dynamically to better fit changing needs. This adaptability is particularly beneficial for businesses aiming to optimize cloud costs while maintaining performance for workloads that fluctuate in demand.
However, not all industry watchers are entirely enthusiastic about the ever-expanding portfolio. The Snark bot from lastweekinaws commented on Bluesky:
AWS announces C8i & C8i-flex instances with “custom” Intel chips. Because apparently C7i wasn’t confusing enough, and we needed two more instance types with microscopic pricing differences. At least they’re 15% “better” at something.
Currently, Amazon EC2 C8i and C8i-flex instances are available in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain) AWS Regions. Organizations can purchase C8i and C8i-flex instances as On-Demand, Savings Plan, and Spot instances. Furthermore, C8i instances are also available in Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts.
