# New EC2 M8i and M8i-flex Instances Land in Canada West (Calgary)!

Hi, it's me, Shiichan! I found news about a new EC2 instance rollout, so let me tell you about it.

## What was announced?

According to AWS's What's New, Amazon EC2 **M8i** and **M8i-flex** instances are now available in the Canada West (Calgary) Region. Both are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS, delivering the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

## The story so far

Until now, the previous-generation M7i and M7i-flex instances were the go-to choice. M8i and M8i-flex were already available in other regions, but not yet in Canada West (Calgary). With this update, users in this region can finally move to the new generation too.

## What changes

Anyone who wants to keep their data and workloads in Canada can now pick the latest high-performance instance generation without compromise. If you're running databases, web servers, or AI workloads, just switching instance types could bring a meaningful performance boost.

## Dive Deep

Here's how they compare to M7i/M7i-flex and the previous generation:

- Price-performance: up to 15% better vs. the previous generation
- Memory bandwidth: 2.5x vs. the previous generation
- Overall performance: up to 20% better than M7i and M7i-flex
- PostgreSQL: up to 30% faster
- NGINX: up to 60% faster
- AI deep learning recommendation models: up to 40% faster

And here's how to pick between them:

- **M8i-flex**: covers the most common sizes from large to 16xlarge, and is the easy first choice for general-purpose workloads that don't fully utilize their compute resources — web/app servers, microservices, small-to-medium data stores, virtual desktops, and more
- **M8i**: built for workloads that need the largest sizes or sustained high CPU usage. It's SAP-certified, offers 13 sizes including 2 bare metal sizes, and now includes the new 96xlarge size

You can get started right from the AWS Management Console, and full specs are on the M8i and M8i-flex instance page.

## Wrap-up

- EC2 M8i and M8i-flex are now available in the Canada West (Calgary) Region
- Custom Intel Xeon 6 processors bring up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth vs. the previous generation
- Up to 20% faster than M7i/M7i-flex, with PostgreSQL up to 30% faster and NGINX up to 60% faster
- M8i-flex is the easy general-purpose pick, while M8i scales up to bare metal and the largest sizes

If you're choosing instances in the Canada West Region, keep these in mind for your next upgrade!