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Amazon EC2 X8i Instances Land in Milan and Spain, With Up to 3.3x More Memory Bandwidth

AWS What's New ★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure

Hi, I'm Shii-chan! I've got a nice piece of AWS news to share with you today.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, Amazon EC2 X8i instances are now available in two new regions: Europe (Milan) and Europe (Spain). X8i instances run on custom Intel Xeon 6 processors that are available only on AWS, and they're SAP-certified. They deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors available in the cloud.

The story so far

The previous generation, X2i instances, fell a bit short on memory capacity and memory bandwidth for today's demanding workloads. Memory-intensive processes like SAP HANA, large databases, data analytics, and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) needed more headroom than X2i could comfortably offer. X8i itself had already rolled out to other regions, but customers in Milan and Spain hadn't had access yet.

What changes

Now teams based around Europe (Milan) and Europe (Spain) can take full advantage of X8i's performance. Compared to X2i, X8i delivers up to 43% higher performance, 1.5x more memory capacity (up to 6TB), and 3.3x more memory bandwidth. For teams running SAP HANA or large databases in Europe, that means a new option that keeps latency low while boosting performance.

Dive Deep

The announcement also shared some concrete performance comparisons against X2i:

  • Up to 50% higher SAPS performance
  • Up to 47% faster PostgreSQL performance
  • 88% faster Memcached performance
  • 46% faster AI inference performance

X8i comes in 14 sizes, ranging from large to 96xlarge, including two bare metal options. You can purchase it through Savings Plans, On-Demand instances, or Spot instances, so it's flexible enough to fit different workloads and cost needs.

Wrap-up

  • Amazon EC2 X8i instances are now available in Europe (Milan) and Europe (Spain)
  • Powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors and SAP-certified
  • Up to 43% higher performance, 1.5x memory capacity (up to 6TB), and 3.3x memory bandwidth versus X2i
  • SAPS, PostgreSQL, Memcached, and AI inference performance all see substantial gains
  • 14 sizes from large to 96xlarge, including 2 bare metal options
  • Purchasable via Savings Plans, On-Demand, or Spot instances

This is a solid update for anyone running SAP HANA, large databases, or data analytics platforms in Europe.

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