
New Lower-Cost, AMD-Powered M5a and R5a EC2 Instances - jeffbarr
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-lower-cost-amd-powered-ec2-instances/
======
phoboslab
Just a friendly reminder that AWS pricing is still insanely high compared to
dedicated bare metal servers. On AWS you'd pay around $1500/mo for 24 cores
("m5a.12xlarge")[1] while e.g. Hetzner offers a 24 core AMD bare metal server
for $190/mo[2].

Also consider that on AWS you pay for traffic on top of that; prices for which
is even more insane. 100TB, while free with Hetzner, would cost you somewhere
around $9000 on AWS.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-
demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/)

[2] [https://www.hetzner.de/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-
ax](https://www.hetzner.de/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax)

~~~
jread
EC2 on-demand/hourly to Hetzner monthly pricing is not really an apples-to-
apples comparison. EC2 reserve pricing is more similar and about 1/2 or less
of on-demand fees. Hetzner is still cheaper, and if all you need is a low cost
dedicated server w/local disks and bandwidth, this is a great choice - but AWS
provides an entire ecosystem of services including configurable EBS and S3
storage, as well as more diverse and scalable purchase/provisioning options.

~~~
Spivak
Having a large ecosystem of services should be a reason AWS is cheaper since
on average you'll spend money on those integrations -- not a reason to pay a
premium.

~~~
bduerst
Increased complexity leads to increased overhead costs. A bare metal instance
is going to be cheaper to maintain than a full-service instance that
interfaces with a robust ecosystem (even if that instance doesn't use any of
it).

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Doesn't this discount the considerable economy-of-scale advantage that Amazon
should have?

~~~
Donald
Not when Amazon's scaling benefits are used to mostly benefit themselves.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Well that's a different point. Complexity, economies of scale, and high-prices
charged by an incumbent market-leader, are three different matters.

------
heisenbergs
The pricing seems to be around 10% cheaper than the equivalent Intel based
servers (m5a.4xlarge $0.688 per Hour vs m5.4xlarge $0.768 per Hour, similar
for other instance sizes). I was expecting AMD servers to be somewhat cheaper,
but given that the server CPU is only one of many components I guess the
savings can't be that much more. Would be interesting to see how the actual
performance per $ is different.

Exciting to have AMD on AWS though. Still far more expensive than rolling your
own hardware or getting bare metal servers.

------
piinbinary
> custom AMD EPYC processors

I wonder, how much effort does that entail? Is this some TDP and firmware
tweaks, or is it actually different silicon? If the later, that sounds like a
reasonably big bet that there will be a lot of AMD chips sold to AWS.

~~~
monocasa
I've heard on the grapevine that nearly all of the large customers ask for
(and receive) custom silicon features. The complete set of these special
features technically exist on all these chips as they share the same mask, but
the different private SKUs have their special features fused/lasered off or
hidden behind an MSR knock like all other binning.

EDIT: These features tend to be stuff like first class connections to in house
security chips and the like. It's more about integration with their systems
than any cool feature or isntruction that only "special" customers are cool
enough to get.

~~~
vesrah
Wired did an article about how Intel does this
[https://www.wired.com/2013/05/facebook-and-
intel/](https://www.wired.com/2013/05/facebook-and-intel/)

------
pella
"AMD Next Horizon Live Blog" ( about ZEN2 ) :
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13547/amd-next-horizon-
live-b...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13547/amd-next-horizon-live-blog-
starts-9am-pt-5pm-utc)

~~~
andy_ppp
Sounds like they are doing 7nm chips with TSMC, if true they’ll surely
overtake Intel in terms of performance? Wish I’d have bought AMD now...

~~~
lettergram
They are still down $10 - $12 from where they were last month (aka 30%). I
bought a lot at ~$2, but just bought more.

------
NicoJuicy
Offtopic, but does anyone have the stock data / second of AMD on minute 13
till minute 17.

I only see the press-release at minute 15:00 everywhere * and in minute 15 the
stock also rose 6-7%. I'm curious on "how fast" the algorithms work and/or if
early press releases are possible to a private club :)

* One minor exception, this one is published on minute 14, but is propably another issue on the website itselve ( [https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-introduces-new...](https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-introduces-new-amazon-ec2-instances-featuring-amd-epyc-processors-2018-11-06) )

~~~
__d
Algorithms will usually use real-time data. For that, you're really comparing
microseconds (or even nanoseconds).

You can't get that data for free though.

~~~
NicoJuicy
I don't want microseconds, i want to see seconds and how the markets perform
in general.

I can't compete in microseconds (ever), i can in seconds :p

------
gravypod
Very strange that none of these processors are rated with ECUs in the pricing
table. Is AWS still working on bench marking these or is this an extension of
whatever agreement AWS/AMD has reached?

------
ramshanker
Now,

Step 0: Amazon adds AMD server which are cheaper then equivalent intel ones.

Step 1: People prefer these _cheaper_ instance.

Step 2: Amazon AI notices the demand for AMD, goes back to Step 0.

Repeat.

~~~
atq2119
How the mighty have fallen, if simple counting is sold as AI...

(Nothing against you, obviously, it's just a weird trend that's being going
around because AI is the current buzzword.)

~~~
nameless912
"AI" is the name we give to algorithms we don't understand.

However, in this case, if basic accounting is an algorithm we don't
understand, then we've lost our way.

------
tyingq
Happy to see something like the old Opteron days. Competition is good.

------
WillPostForFood
Any idea how the compute of a m5a.large would compare to a c5.large? They are
almost identical in price, but the m5a instances have double the memory.

------
pipesman
I can't seem to find a way to launch these instances through the AWS console.
Does anyone else see them yet?

~~~
douglasfshearer
Only in selected regions at the moment. I can see the m5a and r5a instances
available in the console from the Ireland and Virginia regions.

------
plantain
So there's Memory Optimized, General Purpose... but there's no Compute
Optimized? What gives?

~~~
ficklepickle
DO has compute optimized droplets. I tried running aircrack, and I got really
good performance (10k/sec on 16vCPU, vs 13k/sec on EC2 32 core dedicated).

Unfortunately, EC2 was still 8x cheaper because of spot pricing. 2 hours cost
me $4 on DO but .50 on EC2 spot instances.

Interestingly, a DO sales guy emailed me, more than once, because I used a
compute droplet for 2 hours. They must be hard up for leads! Strange, he
didn't get back to me when I told him what I was using it for.

------
tyfon
How are they managing 96 vCPUs? Is this a new custom quad socket board or is
it based on HT?

~~~
pdpi
Whatever AMD's version of that is called, yes — AWS has historically always
been 1 vCPU = 1 hardware thread, so pretty much half a HT-enabled core.

~~~
boojums
Simultaneous Multi Threading (SMT) is the generic term for Hyper Threading

------
nemothekid
In standard AWS fashion, there doesn’t seem to be any pricing table anywhere.

~~~
altmind
I cannot recomend [http://ec2instances.info](http://ec2instances.info) enough
- it is so much easier to filter and sort instance info.

Yet, new instances are not there yet.

~~~
luscious_t
Submit a PR?
[https://github.com/powdahound/ec2instances.info/](https://github.com/powdahound/ec2instances.info/)

