
Amazon EC2 Instance Update – Faster Processors and More Memory - nnx
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-ec2-instance-update-faster-processors-and-more-memory/
======
degenerate
Anecdotal comment: it looks like Amazon is putting an audio player at the top
of each press release to showcase their "Amazon Polly" deep learning
voiceover. Starting at 3:18 in the audio it starts reading the entire table
and (expectedly) screws up reading the table, but not _too_ bad.

However it's a great way of proving that we are not ready for computers to
read to us yet.

~~~
jeffbarr
The audio is generated by Amazon Polly; see
[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/give-your-wordpress-
blog-a-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/give-your-wordpress-blog-a-voice-
with-our-new-amazon-polly-plugin/) for more info!

I now use the audio version as a second form of proofreading, and find that it
helps me to find places where my written transitions could be better.

I agree that there's room to make the contents of the table sound better, but
I am not sure what direction this should go in. Suggestions are welcome!

~~~
degenerate
Hi Jeff, here's a suggestion: When entering a table, maybe Polly can announce
the table and read each data cell followed by the <th> descriptor for that
cell.

Example:

" _Table 1: Row 1: [Instance name: z1d.large] ... [vCPUs: 2] ... [Memory: 16
GB] ... [Local Storage: 1 x 75 GB NVMe SSD] ... [EBS-Optimized Bandwidth: Up
to 2.333 Gbps] ... [Network Bandwidth: Up to 10 Gbps] ... [pause] ... Row 2:
[...]_ "

This is how a human would read it, so Polly should do it that way too. What a
human actually ends up doing though, is reference the preceding row for each
subsequent row. Something like " _z1d.xlarge has double the vCPUs, double the
Memory, and double the Local Storage, with EBS-Optimized Bandwidth and Network
Bandwidth the same._ " \-- I don't think you are at that point yet with Polly
;)

~~~
jeffbarr
Hmmm - cool idea, but definitely ambitious and re:Invent is almost here.

The plugin is open source and we welcome PRs at
[https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-
plugin](https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin) . Feel free
to code something up and give it a try :-)

------
JimmyAustin
"Sustained all-code Turbo Boost" sounds like a euphemism for "We want to say
overclocked but Intel won't let us".

~~~
notatoad
Isn't turbo boost an Intel trademark? If so, that sounds more like a "factory
overclock", which isn't really an overclock at all.

~~~
dmichulke
If my memory serves me well, Knight Rider had a Turbo Boost before Intel :-)

~~~
stephengillie
In the show, look for the one bush that isn't burning in the lava, or
otherwise shouldn't be there. They hid a ramp behind it every time.

------
nnx
> Z1d instances use custom Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors running at up to
> 4.0 GHz, powered by sustained all-core Turbo Boost.

Sounds rather impressive. Are similar Xeons available anywhere else?

~~~
NathanKP
Azure has the 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon® Platinum 8168 SkyLake processor. It has
clock speeds as high as 3.7 GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost, but that's for a
single core not all core, and also not sustained.

And on GCP the best CPU is 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon E5 (Sandy Bridge)

So when these Z1d instances are GA they will be the fastest available VM's
across the major clouds.

~~~
namibj
There is the E3-1270v6 with 3.8GHz base Kaby Lake over at Vultr. Packet also
seems to have nice offerings, but both are in these configurations supplied as
bare-metal. It always depends on what you need.

------
nodesocket
Google Cloud instance types are so much easier to grok and simple. I think AWS
adds complexity and makes poor user experience decisions on purpose sometimes
(tongue and cheek).

AWS T2, M5, M5d, C5, C5d, X1e, X1, R4, H1, I3, D2 vs GCE standard, memory
optimized, or compute optimized. Want a custom amount of cores and memory on
GCE? No problem, just punch it in.

Then there is EC2 billing... Google Cloud sustained use and committed use
discounts are superior yet again.

~~~
cbsmith
Amazon groups the types into standard, memory optimized, compute optimized,
and storage optimized.

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voltagex_
Still no way to get 16+ cores without huge amounts of RAM (and cost). My
workloads are CPU bound but not particularly memory intensive.

~~~
AWS_F1
Did you consider C5/C5d ? they typically get to 3.5Ghz and have smaller
DRAM/vCPU ratio

~~~
voltagex_
C4 spot instances work for me at the moment. The price increase for C5 wasn't
worth it as I was only seeing a 5-10% performance increase. I need to re-
benchmark though.

~~~
Johnny555
_The price increase for C5 wasn 't worth_

I don't know about spot pricing, but on demand pricing for c5's is about 15%
less than the c4's.

If you look at c5d's with ephemeral storage they are still a bit cheaper than
c4's.

------
AWS_F1
Z1d, R5 and R5d are publicly available now

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-
available-r5-r5d-and-z1...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-
available-r5-r5d-and-z1d-instances/)

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NDizzle
The z1d.6xlarge is a great match for what I was just searching for... I'm
looking for a spot to park my 16 core 192gb SQL Servers, which have licensing
for exactly 16 cores. I was looking at the 32 core, 244gb r4.8xlarge instances
and trying to figure out what to do with the unused cores!

~~~
kondro
You can actually take most EC2 instances and specify the number of cores it
has for this type of licensing issue:
[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-
optimize-cpu.html)

~~~
wmf
Note that this doesn't save any money because you're still paying for the
disabled cores. IIRC GCE does not have that limitation.

~~~
kondro
That's true, but given that 32 cores of something like Oracle is something
like $800k, I'm not sure it's all that relevant.

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the8472
Nice, the z1d instances might be perfect for interactive raytracing we do at
$employer. The tracing itself is quite efficient and parallel, but scene
manipulation has a lot of single core and IO bottlenecks. Plus the metal
versions are useful to profile the whole thing.

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andrewstuart
I'd like to see nested virtualization on EC2.

~~~
AWS_F1
The press release mentions Z1d.metal bare metal version coming soon, that
would save the need to run hypervisor on hypervisor in the largest instance.

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Roritharr
I take it these vCPUs are hyperthreads? Or are they actual cores with HT
turned off?

~~~
wmf
Yeah, vCPUs are hyperthreads.

