Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M8i and M8i-Flex instances, the latest generation of general-purpose instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS with sustained all-core 3.9 GHz turbo frequency. These instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud, and they also deliver up to 15 percent better price performance, up to 20 percent higher performance, and 2.5 times more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation M7i and M7i-Flex instances. These instances are ideal for running general purpose workloads such as general web application servers, virtual desktops, batch processing, microservices, databases, and enterprise applications.
In terms of performance, M8i and M8i-flex instances are specifically up to 60 percent faster for NGINX web applications, up to 30 percent faster for PostgreSQL database workloads, and up to 40 percent faster for AI deep learning recommendation models compared to M7i and M7i-Flex instances. They also use the new sixth generation AWS Nitro Cards, delivering up to two times more network and Amazon EBS bandwidth compared to the
Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) general-purpose M8i and M8i-Flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS with sustained all-core 3.9 GHz turbo frequency. These instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud. They also deliver up to 15 percent better price performance, up to 20 percent higher performance, and 2.5 times more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation M7i and M7i-Flex instances.
M8i and M8i-flex instances are ideal for running general purpose workloads such as general web application servers, virtual desktops, batch processing, microservices, databases, and enterprise applications. In terms of performance, these instances are specifically up to 60 percent faster for NGINX web applications, up to 30 percent faster for PostgreSQL database workloads, and up to 40 percent faster for AI deep learning recommendation models compared to M7i and M7i-Flex instances.
As like R8i and R8i-Flex instances, these instances use the new sixth generation AWS Nitro Cards, delivering up to two times more network and Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) bandwidth compared to the previous generation instances. It greatly improves network throughput for workloads handling small packets such as web, application, and gaming servers. They also support bandwidth configuration with 25 percent allocation adjustments between network and Amazon EBS bandwidth, enabling better database performance, query processing, and logging speeds.
M8i instances
M8i instances provide up to 384 vCPUs and 1.5 TB memory including bare metal instances that provide dedicated access to the underlying physical hardware. These SAP-certified instances help you to run large application servers and databases, gaming servers, CPU-based inference, and video streaming that need the largest instance sizes or high CPU continuously.
Here are the specs for M8i instances:
| Instance size | vCPUs | Memory (GiB) | Network bandwidth (Gbps) | EBS bandwidth (Gbps) |
| m8i.large | 2 | 8 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| m8i.xlarge | 4 | 16 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| m8i.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| m8i.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| m8i.8xlarge | 32 | 128 | 15 | 10 |
| m8i.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | 22.5 | 15 |
| m8i.16xlarge | 64 | 256 | 30 | 20 |
| m8i.24xlarge | 96 | 384 | 40 | 30 |
| m8i.32xlarge | 128 | 512 | 50 | 40 |
| m8i.48xlarge | 192 | 768 | 75 | 60 |
| m8i.96xlarge | 384 | 1536 | 100 | 80 |
| m8i.metal-48xl | 192 | 768 | 75 | 60 |
| m8i.metal-96xl | 384 | 1536 | 100 | 80 |
M8i-Flex instances
M8i-Flex instances are a lower-cost variant of the M8i instances, with 5 percent better price performance at 5 percent lower prices. They’re designed for workloads that benefit from the latest generation performance but don’t fully utilize all compute resources. These instances can reach up to the full CPU performance 95 percent of the time.
Here are the specs for the M8i-Flex instances:
| Instance size | vCPUs | Memory (GiB) | Network bandwidth (Gbps) | EBS bandwidth (Gbps) |
| m8i-flex.large | 2 | 8 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| m8i-flex.xlarge | 4 | 16 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 10 |
| m8i-flex.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| m8i-flex.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| m8i-flex.8xlarge | 32 | 128 | Up to 15 | Up to 10 |
| m8i-flex.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | Up to 22.5 | Up to 15 |
| m8i-flex.16xlarge | 64 | 256 | Up to 30 | Up to 20 |
If you’re currently using earlier generations of general-purpose instances, you can adopt M8i-Flex instances without having to make changes to your application or your workload.
Now available
Amazon EC2 M8i and M8i-Flex instances are available today in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain) AWS Regions. M8i and M8i-Flex instances can be purchased as On-Demand, Savings Plan, and Spot instances. M8i instances are also available in Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.
Give M8i and M8i-Flex instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 M8i instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.
— Channy
