AWS launches own server hardware

Waiting for someone else to design an Arm server processor that can work at scale on the cloud just wasn't working for Amazon Web Services (AWS) which is why the company decided to design its own.

At its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Vice President of Infrastructure Peter DeSantis introduced the AWS Gravitron Processor to give customers a third option in addition to instances that use processors from Intel and AMD.

While AWS did not provide specific details about the processor itself,  DeSantis confirmed that it was designed for scale-out workloads that require a lot of servers to solve problems.

The new instances will be called EC2 A1 and they will be able to run applications written for Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu. As of now, EC2 A1 is generally available in US East (Northern Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland).

Competition in the server market

Intel currently controls the market for server processors both in the cloud and in the on-premise server market. AMD has tried to challenge the company's dominance for years but has been unsuccessful although its new Epyc processors have been praised by people purchasing servers and by cloud companies like AWS.

AWS's Gravitron Processor builds on the company's acquisition of Annapurna Labs back in 2015.

Vice President of Compute Services at AWS, Matt Garman provided more details on its Gravitron Processors in a statement, saying:

“With today’s introduction of A1 instances, we’re providing customers with a cost optimized way to run distributed applications like containerized microservices. A1 instances are powered by our new custom-designed AWS Graviton processors with the Arm instruction set that leverages our expertise in building hyperscale cloud platforms for over a decade. 

"For scale-out distributed workloads, our new P3dn instances and C5n instances offer 100 Gbps networking performance to speed distributed machine learning training and high performance computing. These new instance launches expand what's already the industry’s most powerful and cost-effective computing platform to meet the needs of new and emerging workloads.” 

Via GeekWire

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November 27, 2018 at 11:22PM
Anthony Spadafora