# EC2 C7a Arrives in N. California With Up to 50% Higher Performance

Hey everyone, Shii-chan here! Today's update is about a compute-optimized instance family landing in a new region.

## What was announced?

AWS shared in its What's New feed that compute-optimized Amazon EC2 C7a instances are now available in the US West (N. California) region. C7a is powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors (code-named Genoa) with a maximum frequency of 3.7 GHz, delivering up to 50% higher performance than the previous-generation C6a.

## The story so far

Before this, anyone running compute-optimized workloads in N. California had C6a as their option. C6a was a strong performer, but it didn't support newer processor capabilities like AVX-512, VNNI, and bfloat16, and it topped out at 28 attached EBS volumes.

## What changes

With C7a now available in this region, these workloads can run with more performance headroom:

- Batch processing
- Distributed analytics
- High performance computing (HPC)
- Ad serving
- Highly scalable multiplayer gaming
- Video encoding

C7a uses DDR5 memory with 2.25x more memory bandwidth than C6a. Combined with support for AVX-512, VNNI, and bfloat16, workloads that can take advantage of these capabilities should see real gains in raw compute performance.

## Dive Deep

C7a comes in 12 sizes, from medium up to 48xlarge, including a bare-metal option, and it's built on the AWS Nitro System.

One detail worth calling out: the EBS volume limit. C6a topped out at 28 attached volumes, while C7a supports up to 128 — a meaningful upgrade if your architecture relies on splitting storage across many volumes.

C7a is available through On-Demand, Spot Instances, and Savings Plans.

## Wrap-up

- Compute-optimized EC2 C7a instances are now available in US West (N. California)
- Powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC (Genoa), up to 50% higher performance than C6a
- Supports AVX-512, VNNI, and bfloat16, with 2.25x more memory bandwidth
- Attachable EBS volumes jump from 28 to 128
- 12 sizes from medium to 48xlarge, including bare metal

If your team runs HPC or batch workloads in N. California, switching to C7a could make a noticeable difference.