Compute optimized instances

C5 and C5n instances

These instances are well suited for the following:

• Batch processing workloads

• Media transcoding

• High-performance web servers

• High-performance computing (HPC)

• Scientific modeling

• Dedicated gaming servers and ad serving engines

• Machine learning inference and other compute-intensive applications

C6g, C6gd, and C6gn instances

These instances are powered by Amazon Graviton2 processors and are ideal for running advanced, compute-intensive workloads, such as the following:

• High-performance computing (HPC)

• Batch processing

• Ad serving

• Video encoding

• Gaming servers

• Scientific modeling

• Distributed analytics

• CPU-based machine learning inference

C6i and C6id instances

These instances are ideal for running advanced, compute-intensive workloads, such as the following:

• High-performance computing (HPC)

• Batch processing

• Ad serving

• Video encoding

• Distributed analytics

• Highly scalable multiplayer gaming

C6in instances

These instances are well suited for compute-intensive workloads such as the following:

• Distributed computing applications

• Network virtual appliances

• Data analytics

• High Performance Computing (HPC)

• CPU-based AI/ML

Hpc6a instances

These instances are ideal for running high performance computing (HPC) workloads, such as the following:

• Molecular dynamics

• Computational chemistry

• Computational fluid dynamics

• Weather forecasting

• Materials simulation

• Crash simulations

• Astrophysics

Amazon Graviton processors

• Amazon Graviton2: C6g, C6gd, C6gn

• Amazon Graviton3: C7g

AMD processors

• 2nd generation AMD EPYC processors (AMD EPYC 7R32): C5a, C5ad

• 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors (AMD EPYC 7R13): C6a, Hpc6a

Intel processors

• Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Haswell E5-2666 v3): C4

• Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Skylake 8124): C5n

• Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Skylake 8124M or Cascade Lake 8223CL): Smaller C5 and C5d

• 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake 8275CL): Larger C5 and C5d

• 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake 8375C): C6i, C6id

• C4 instances and instances built on the Nitro System require 64-bit EBS-backed HVM AMIs. They have high-memory and require a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of that capacity. HVM AMIs provide superior performance in comparison to paravirtual (PV) AMIs on high-memory instance types. In addition, you must use an HVM AMI to take advantage of enhanced networking.

• C7g instances are powered by the latest generation Amazon Graviton3 processors. They offer up to 25% better performance over the sixth generation Amazon Graviton2-based C6g instances. C7g instances are the first in the cloud to feature DDR5 memory, which provides 50% higher memory bandwidth compared to DDR4 memory to enable high-speed access to data in memory.

  • C7g instances limit the aggregate execution rate of high power instructions such as floating point multiply accumulates across cores in an instance. Future instance types focused on other workload segments may not have this restriction

• Instances built on the Nitro System have the following requirements:

  • NVMe drivers must be installed

  • Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) drivers must be installed

  The following Linux AMIs meet these requirements:

  • Amazon Linux 2

  • Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03

  • Ubuntu 14.04 or later with linux-aws kernel

    Note

    Amazon Graviton-based instance types require Ubuntu 18.04 or later with linux-aws kernel

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 or later

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 or later

  • CentOS 7.4.1708 or later

  • FreeBSD 11.1 or later

  • Debian GNU/Linux 9 or later

• Instances with an Amazon Graviton processors have the following requirements:

  • Use an AMI for the 64-bit Arm architecture.

  • Support booting through UEFI with ACPI tables and support ACPI hot-plug of PCI devices.

  The following AMIs meet these requirements:

  • Amazon Linux 2 (64-bit Arm)

  • Ubuntu 16.04 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • Debian 10 or later (64-bit Arm)

• To get the best performance from your C6i instances, ensure that they have ENA driver version 2.2.9 or later. Using an ENA driver earlier than version 1.2 with these instances causes network interface attachment failures. The following AMIs have a compatible ENA driver.

  • Amazon Linux 2 with kernel 4.14.186

  • Ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.4.0-1025-aws

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 with kernel 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.ARCH

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 with kernel 5.3.18-24.15.1

• Instances built on the Nitro System instances support a maximum of 28 attachments, including network interfaces, EBS volumes, and NVMe instance store volumes. For more information, see Nitro System volume limits.

• To get the best performance from your C6gn instances, ensure that they have ENA driver version 2.2.9 or later. Using an ENA driver earlier than version 1.2 with these instances causes network interface attachment failures. The following AMIs have a compatible ENA driver.

  • Amazon Linux 2 with kernel 4.14.186

  • Ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.4.0-1025-aws

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 with kernel 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.ARCH

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 with kernel 5.3.18-24.15.1

• To launch AMIs for all Linux distributions on C6gn instances, use AMIs with the latest version and run an update for the latest driver. For earlier versions, download the latest driver from GitHub.

• Launching a bare metal instance boots the underlying server, which includes verifying all hardware and firmware components. This means that it can take 20 minutes from the time the instance enters the running state until it becomes available over the network.

• To attach or detach EBS volumes or secondary network interfaces from a bare metal instance requires PCIe native hotplug support. Amazon Linux 2 and the latest versions of the Amazon Linux AMI support PCIe native hotplug, but earlier versions do not. You must enable the following Linux kernel configuration options:

  CONFIG_HOTPLUG_PCI_PCIE=y
  CONFIG_PCIEASPM=y

• Bare metal instances use a PCI-based serial device rather than an I/O port-based serial device. The upstream Linux kernel and the latest Amazon Linux AMIs support this device. Bare metal instances also provide an ACPI SPCR table to enable the system to automatically use the PCI-based serial device. The latest Windows AMIs automatically use the PCI-based serial device.

• Instances built on the Nitro System should have acpid installed to support clean shutdown through API requests.

• There is a limit on the total number of instances that you can launch in a Region, and there are additional limits on some instance types. For more information, see How many instances can I run in Amazon EC2? in the Amazon EC2 FAQ.