AWS 推出 c7g 機種

AWSAmazon EC2 產品線上推出了新一代的 ARM 產品,AWS Graviton3 架構,c7g 系列機種:「New – Amazon EC2 C7g Instances, Powered by AWS Graviton3 Processors」。

Graviton3 宣稱比 Graviton2 多 25% 的一般性效能,以及多了一倍的浮點效能,還有 DDR5 的頻寬優勢:

Our next generation, Graviton3 processors, deliver up to 25 percent higher performance, up to 2x higher floating-point performance, and 50 percent faster memory access based on leading-edge DDR5 memory technology compared with Graviton2 processors.

在「FreeBSD on the Graviton 3」這邊也可以看到一些效能數據 (雖然是跑在 FreeBSD 上),可以看到基本上符合 AWS 的宣稱。

目前只有 us-east-1us-west-2 有這個機種,不過 Graviton 系列一直都是 AWS 的強主打項目,其他區域應該很快就會看到:

C7g instances are initially available in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions; other Regions will be added shortly after launch.

價位上比 c6g 貴了一些,在 us-east-1c7g.16xlarge (64 vCPU + 128 GB RAM) 是 US$2.32/hour,而 c6g.16xlarge 是 US$2.176/hour,大約貴了 6.6%,但如果是 CPU bounded 的應用來說,應該還是蠻划算的。

另外一方面是等後續的 m7gr7g 系列出現...

AWS 要推出 Graviton3 的機種了

AWS 打算要推出 Graviton3 的機種了,目前還在 preview 階段:「Join the Preview – Amazon EC2 C7g Instances Powered by New AWS Graviton3 Processors」。

目前是宣稱與前一代的 Graviton2 相比有 25% 的效能提昇,另外在浮點數與密碼相關的運算上面也會有改善 (這個效能提昇的數字應該是有指令集的幫助):

In comparison to the Graviton2, the Graviton3 will deliver up to 25% more compute performance and up to twice as much floating point & cryptographic performance. On the machine learning side, Graviton3 includes support for bfloat16 data and will be able to deliver up to 3x better performance.

另外提到了 signed pointer,可以避免 stack 被搞,不過這邊需要 OS 與 compiler 的支援,算是針對 stack 類的攻擊提出的防禦方案:

Graviton3 processors also include a new pointer authentication feature that is designed to improve security. Before return addresses are pushed on to the stack, they are first signed with a secret key and additional context information, including the current value of the stack pointer. When the signed addresses are popped off the stack, they are validated before being used. An exception is raised if the address is not valid, thereby blocking attacks that work by overwriting the stack contents with the address of harmful code. We are working with operating system and compiler developers to add additional support for this feature, so please get in touch if this is of interest to you.

然後是使用 DDR5 的記憶體:

C7g instances will be available in multiple sizes (including bare metal), and are the first in the cloud industry to be equipped with DDR5 memory. In addition to drawing less power, this memory delivers 50% higher bandwidth than the DDR4 memory used in the current generation of EC2 instances.

現在還沒看到價錢,不過有可能是跟 c6g 一樣的價位?但考慮到記憶體換架構,也有可能是貴一些的?

另外翻了一下資料,ARM 有發表過新聞稿提到 Graviton2 是 ARM 的 Cortex-M55 機種:「Designing Arm Cortex-M55 CPU on Arm Neoverse powered AWS Graviton2 Processors」,這次的 Graviton3 應該在之後完整公開後會有更多消息出來...