AWS Launches 896-Core Instance, Double What Competitors Offer

Liftr Insights, a pioneer in market intelligence driven by unique data, revealed today that it detected AWS’s recent launch of an 896-core instance type, surpassing the previous highest core counts by any cloud provider.

This is important to companies looking to improve performance. If they are not using these, their competitors might be.

Liftr® data show the previous AWS high core-count instance had 448 cores and first appeared in May 2021. Prior to that, the largest instance available in the six largest cloud providers (representing over 75% of the public cloud space) was a 384-core instance first offered by Azure in 2019.

 

Liftr Insights identifies a new 896-Core cloud instance, double what competitors offer

 

The prices for this new instance type range by configuration and city from ~$150 per hour to over $400 per hour with an average price of $263.10.

Companies are willing to pay these prices to achieve high thread counts that improve performance, especially for databases like SAP HANA and Oracle. Liftr Insights tracks many characteristics, including the high memory configuration associated with these instances and the on-demand price.

“It’s not advantageous for AWS to deploy solutions that won’t sell, especially at these price-points,” says Tab Schadt, CEO of Liftr Insights. “They spend significant time and money on their market intelligence. Other companies can benefit from their research about what they are offering and where they offer them at a fraction of that cost.”

Consistent with other AWS deployments, this instance first appeared in the East and West coast regions of the US, but they also deployed these instance types in Seoul and Sydney. The 448-core instances were deployed early on across the globe, but initial appearances were in Dublin, Frankfurt and Singapore. Deployments of the 448-core instance did not appear in Seoul and Sydney until 3 and 6 months later, respectively. Deploying to those non-US regions from the start for this 896-core instance is a strong sign of demand in those areas.

“Perhaps we’ll see larger instances in the near future, showing even more demand for high performance workloads,” says Schadt. “At the least, we’ll keep an eye out to see if and when Azure or other cloud providers respond in kind.”