Intel and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are pleased to announce the general availability of the C7i instance. This EC2 custom instance is powered by 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors that bring Intel® Accelerator Engines to the masses using Xeon you can trust and AWS’s expansive global footprint. The C7i instances are ideal for all compute-intensive workloads, such as batch processing, distributed analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding.
This comes at a time when today’s high-performance computing landscape is rapidly evolving, with the market skyrocketing to $34.8 billion due to continued developments in technical advancements. Using C7i, organizations in this community can push boundaries by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into their high-performance interfaces.*
Redefine Performance, Accelerate Data and AI Operations
With the new C7i, you get the 4th Gen Xeon’s Intel® Accelerator Engines that help redefine performance and accelerate your business outcomes and results:
- The Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) offer a much-needed alternative in the market for customers running AI models with fewer than 10 billion parameters, boosting inference and training without additional hardware. Artificial intelligence (AI) inference and training workloads running on Amazon EC2 C7i instances can gain an added boost from Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX).
- The Intel® Data Streaming Accelerator (Intel® DSA) is designed to offload the most common data movement tasks that cause overhead in data center-scale deployments. Intel DSA helps speed up data movement across the CPU, memory, and caches, as well as all attached memory, storage, and network devices.
- Intel® In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (Intel® IAA) lets customers run database and analytics workloads faster, with potentially greater power efficiency. And increases query throughput and decreases the memory footprint for in-memory database and big data analytics workloads. Intel IAA is ideal for in-memory databases, open-source databases, and data stores like RocksDB and ClickHouse.
- Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) – Intel QAT web page helps reduce system resource consumption—and TCO—by accelerating cryptography and data compression. By offloading encryption, decryption, and compression, this built-in accelerator helps free up processor cores so that systems can serve a larger number of clients or use less power.
Differentiation: High-Performance Interfaces for Your High-Compute Workloads
C7i instances use DDRS memory that provides higher bandwidth compared to C6i instances. C7i instances support up to 40Gbps bandwidth to Amazon EBS and up to 50 Gbps of networking bandwidth. With C7i instances you can attach up to 128 EBS volumes to an instance (compared to C6i which allowed up to 28 EBS volume attachments to an instance). C7i instances also support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) in the 48xlarge size and metal-48xl size.
This is ideal for batch processing, distributed analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding.
C7i instance is currently available on-demand, in the following AWS Regions:
- US East (Ohio, N. Virginia)
- US West (Oregon)
- Europe (Ireland, Spain, and Stockholm)
Lower TCO, Flexibility, and Choice
Amazon found that C7i instances deliver up to 15% better price performance than C6i instances. They also offer up to 1.5X more vCPU and memory than C6i instances, with up to 192 vCPUs and 384 GiB of memory that you can use to consolidate workloads on fewer instances.**
C7i is built on the AWS Nitro System, enabling assembly in many different ways, allowing AWS to flexibly design and rapidly deliver this instance with a broad selection of compute, storage and memory, and network options.
Accomplish High-Performance Business Priorities
With the launch of the new C7i instance between Intel and AWS, businesses and partners in the high-performance computing community can accomplish high-performance and transformation demands.
Where to Learn More and Get Started:
- AWS's What's New Announcement: Introducing Amazon EC2 C7i instances
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Intel.com
- Intel® Accelerator Engines
- High-Performance Computing (HPC) Technology and Resources - Intel
- 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors prioritized use cases with value propositions
*Source: HPC Wire, Five Trends Shaping HPC in 2023, March 6, 2023
**Intel does not control or audit third party data. You should consult other sources to determine accuracy.
Josh Hilliker is a Senior Cloud Solutions Architect in Data Center Sales focused on advancing our Autonomous Data Center solutions, including telemetry and infrastructure modernization. Josh has held many past roles at Intel including the following: Director in SMG University, Platform Marketing in Business Client Platform Division, Intel GE-Care Innovations as the Director of Social Media, Online Presence and Google Analytics for consumer products, Product Engineer with the IT Land Capital and Acquisitions team, Operations manager for Intel e-Business Infrastructure & OEM Business Link, Architect / Community manager for Intel® vPro ™ Expert Center, Intel Manufacturing, and Director of Small Business initiatives in Intel Architecture Group.