AWS Graviton

AWS Graviton is a family of 64-bit ARM-based CPUs designed by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary Annapurna Labs. The processor family is distinguished by its lower energy use relative to x86-64, static clock rates, and omission of simultaneous multithreading. It was designed to be tightly integrated with AWS servers and datacenters, and is not sold outside Amazon.[1]

In 2018, AWS released the first version of Graviton suitable for open-source and non-performance-critical scripting workloads as part of its A1 instance family.[2] The second generation, AWS Graviton2, was announced in December 2019 as the first of its sixth generation instances, with AWS promising 40% improved price/performance over fifth generation Intel and AMD instances[3] and an average of 72% reduction in power consumption.[4] In May 2022, AWS made available Graviton3 processors as part of its seventh generation EC2 instances, offering a further 25% better compute performance over Graviton2.[5]

Origin

The first Annapurna Labs silicon product launched under the AWS umbrella was the AWS Nitro hardware and supporting hypervisor in November 2017.[6] Following on from Nitro, Annapurna began to develop general-purpose CPUs using its expertise.

The benefits AWS anticipated included:

  • Offering more choice in terms of selection of EC2 instances for customers
  • Targeting Arm-based applications
  • Providing high availability and security, while reducing virtualization costs
  • Offering decent server performance with lower prices for customers

The first Graviton processor reached these goals. Graviton2 now offers better performance compared to X86-64: 35% faster running Redis,[7] 30% faster running Apache Cassandra,[8] and up to 117% higher throughput for MongoDB.[9] In addition to higher performance, Graviton offers 70% lower power consumption [10] and 20% lower price.[11]

Graviton
Graviton
General information
LaunchedNovember 26, 2018 (November 26, 2018)
Performance
Max. CPU clock rate2.3 GHz
Cache
L1 cache80 KB per core (48 instructions + 32 data)
L2 cache8 MB total
Architecture and classification
Technology node16 nm
Instruction setAArch64
InstructionsAArch64
Extensions
Physical specifications
Cores
History
Successor(s)Graviton2
Support status
Supported

The first Graviton CPU has 16 Cortex A72 cores, with ARMv8-A ISA including Neon, crc, crypto. The vCPUs are physical cores in a single NUMA domain, running at 2.3 GHz. It also includes hardware acceleration for floating-point math, SIMD, plus AES, SHA-1, SHA-256, GCM, and CRC-32 algorithms.[12]

Only the A1 EC2 instance contains the first version of Graviton.[13]

Graviton2

The Graviton2 CPU has 64 Neoverse N1 cores, with ARMv8.2-A ISA including 2×128 bit Neon, LSE, fp16, rcpc, dotprod, crypto. The vCPUs are physical cores in a single NUMA domain, running at 2.5 GHz.[14]

EC2 instances with Graviton2 CPU: M6g, M6gd, C6g, C6gd, C6gn, R6g, R6gd, T4g, X2gd, G5g, Im4gn, Is4gen, I4g. One or more of these instances are available in 28 AWS regions.

Graviton3

The Graviton3 CPU has 64 Neoverse V1 cores, with ARMv8.4-A ISA including 4x128 bit Neon, LSE, 2×256 bit SVE, rng, bf16, int8, crypto. Organized in a single NUMA domain, all vCPUs are physical cores running at 2.6 GHz.[14]

Graviton3 provides up to 25% better compute performance, up to 2x higher floating-point performance, up to 2× faster cryptographic workload performance, up to 3× better performance for machine learning workloads including support for bfloat16, and 50% more memory bandwidth compared to AWS Graviton2 processors. Graviton3-based instances use up to 60% less energy for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances. [15]

Graviton3E is a higher power version of Graviton3.[16]

EC2 instances with Graviton3 CPU: C7g, M7g, R7g.

EC2 instances with Graviton3E CPU: C7gn, HPC7g.

See also

References
  1. Simonite, Tom (2018-11-27). "New at Amazon: Its Own Chips for Cloud Computing". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  2. Sanders, James (29 November 2018). "FAQ: What Arm servers on AWS mean for your cloud and data center strategy". TechRepublic. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  3. "Announcing New Amazon EC2 M6g, C6g, and R6g Instances Powered by Next-Generation Arm-based AWS Graviton2 Processors". Amazon Web Services. 2019-12-03. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  4. "NTT DOCOMO and NEC Reduce Power Consumption for 5G SA Core by an Average of 72% using AWS Graviton2, followed by a Successful Onboarding of 5G SA Core on Hybrid Cloud". Amazon Web Services. 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
  5. "New – Amazon EC2 C7g Instances, Powered by AWS Graviton3 Processors | AWS News Blog". aws.amazon.com. 23 May 2022. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  6. Liguori, A (2018). "The Nitro Project–Next Generation AWS Infrastructure" (PDF). Hot Chips: A Symposium on High Performance Chips. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  7. "Gain up to 35% performance benefits for deploying Redis on AWS Graviton2". arm. 2021-07-20.
  8. "Increase performance by up to 30% by deploying Apache Cassandra on AWS Graviton2". arm. 2021-08-18.
  9. "MongoDB performance on Arm Neoverse based AWS Graviton2 processors". arm. 2021-06-09.
  10. "NTT DOCOMO and NEC Reduce Power Consumption for 5G SA Core by an Average of 72% using AWS Graviton2, followed by a Successful Onboarding of 5G SA Core on Hybrid Cloud". nec. 2022-11-29.
  11. "20% lower cost and up to 40% higher performance for M6g, C6g, and R6g instances over M5, C5, and R5 instances respectively". amazon. 2022-03-03.
  12. "Amazon's homegrown 2.3GHz 64-bit Graviton processor was very nearly an AMD Arm CPU". theregister. 2018-11-27.
  13. "Amazon EC2 A1 Instances". Amazon Web Services. 2018-11-26. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
  14. "Building for Graviton2 and Graviton3". Amazon Web Services. 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-10-10.
  15. "Amazon 2021 Letter to Shareholders". AboutAmazon. 2022-04-14. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
  16. "New Amazon EC2 Instance Types In the Works". AWS News Blog. 2022-11-28. Retrieved 2022-11-29.


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