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AWS launches virtual servers with custom Intel Xeon 6 chips
The companies tout a collaboration that will offer better price performance and memory bandwidth for memory-intensive workloads.
AWS this week launched its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) R8i and R8i-flex instances -- new virtual servers powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors.
The eighth-generation instances promise 15% price performance gains and 2.5 times more memory bandwidth compared with previous Intel-outfitted instances.
The customized Xeon chips are available on only AWS and feature DDR5 7200MTps memory operating at up to 3.9 GHz, according to AWS. Intel said that firepower will offer flexibility that minimizes the need for specialized accelerators. The chips also provide built-in AI acceleration with integrated Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), delivering up to two times AI inference and machine learning performance gains. Intel introduced its Xeon 6 processors for the data center in April.
While Intel declined to provide specifics on Xeon 6 customization, a spokesperson said the company worked closely with AWS to optimize performance and software implementation.
"Beyond the hardware itself, we worked across the system stack covering firmware, hypervisors, virtualization layers and software frameworks to ensure that these capabilities are fully optimized and accessible to cloud workloads," the spokesperson said via email.
Matt Kimball, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said the offerings will be attractive to enterprise customers.
"If I were an IT professional, the decision to stay on R7i or migrate to R8i would be a no-brainer," he said in an email. "The Granite Rapids architecture has been greatly improved over previous generations to deliver great performance for latency-sensitive workloads."
Competitive advantages for Intel, AWS
The continued relationship between AWS and Intel benefits both companies, analysts said.
For Intel, the nod from AWS for its new generations of instances "is a powerful endorsement, especially as [Intel CEO] Lip-Bu Tan executes his strategic vision for Intel," said Ron Westfall, an analyst at HyperFrame Research, in an email interview. "It demonstrates that Intel's technology can be the choice for demanding, mission-critical workloads such as databases and analytics, reinforcing its market position."
With the collaboration, Amazon can target growing customer demand for increased memory capacity and bandwidth, Westfall said. "Mission-critical enterprise applications, including large-scale business intelligence and data warehousing, require robust and high-performing infrastructure. The R8i instances, with their large instance sizes and bare-metal options, provide the necessary power and reliability," he said.
For Intel, which has seen GPU king Nvidia grab significant market share while its own data center presence shrinks, the nod from AWS is a win for x86 architecture -- where the company hangs on to a lead in the data center despite growing CPU competition from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
"The deal further demonstrates the integral role x86 CPU server processors play in AI training and inference computing devices for 2025 workloads," Westfall said.
Kimball said AWS is diversifying its ability to meet customer needs.
"From an AWS perspective, the company is very focused on delivering customer choice," he said. "Be it AMD with Turin, Graviton or Intel with Xeon 6 -- the company continues to ensure that every customer's use case is being met."
Shane Snider, a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience, covers IT infrastructure at Informa TechTarget.
