AWS introduces speedy new Xeon-powered EC2 instances for EDA workloads
Amazon Web Services debuted a new variety of EC2 instances powered by Intel Xeon chips capable of providing its fastest Electronic Design Automation (EDA) processing functionality yet.
The new Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances use the same Intel Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake) processors as its previously announced EC2 M5zn instances. In these X2iezn deployments, those chips will run at a clock speed of 4.5GHz and will be paired with 1.5TB of memory. AWS claims that these new instances can provide "up to 55% better price-performance per vCPU compared to X1e instances."
Customer-facing deployments of the new product type will range from the x2iezn.2xlarge configuration (8vCPUs, 256GB of RAM, 25Gbps of bandwidth, and 3.17Gbps of Elastic Block Storage (EBS)-optimized bandwidth) to the top-end x2iezn.12xlarge and x2iezn.metal versions (48vCPUs, 1,536GB of RAM, 100Gbps of bandwidth, and 19Gbps of EBS-optimized bandwidth).
Other features will include the option to disable Intel Hyper-Threading technology for workloads that perform better on single-thread CPU, support for non-uniform memory access (NUMA) on the top-end versions, and expanded per-vCPU memory footprints.
The Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances are available now in AWS' US East (North Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Europe (Ireland) Regions. They can be acquired via the company's On-Demand Instance interface, as well as through Reserved Instances, its Savings Plan, and Spot instances. AWS also notes that Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts are available for EC2 X2iezn deployments.