AWS and AMD have collaborated to give customers more choice and value in cloud computing, starting with the first generation AMD EPYC processors in 2018, such as M5a/R5a, M5ad/R5ad, and T3a instances. At AWS re:Invent this week, Amazon announced GA of Amazon EC2 M6a instances featuring 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors. These AMD processors operate at frequencies up to 3.6 GHz and offer up to 35 percent price performance versus the previous generation M5a instances.
AWS and AMD have collaborated to give customers more choice and value in cloud computing, starting with the first generation AMD EPYC processors in 2018, such as M5a/R5a, M5ad/R5ad, and T3a instances. At AWS re:Invent this week, Amazon announced GA of Amazon EC2 M6a instances featuring 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors. These AMD processors operate at frequencies up to 3.6 GHz and offer up to 35 percent price performance versus the previous generation M5a instances.
Amazon EC2 M6a Instances
The M6a instances are available in ten sizes in the AWS US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) Regions as On-Demand, Spot, and Reserved Instance or as part of a Savings Plan. Here are the specs:
| Name | vCPUs | Memory (GiB) |
Network Bandwidth (Gbps) |
EBS Throughput (Gbps) |
| m6a.large | 2 | 8 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 6.6 |
| m6a.xlarge | 4 | 16 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 6.6 |
| m6a.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 6.6 |
| m6a.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | Up to 12.5 | Up to 6.6 |
| m6a.8xlarge | 32 | 128 | 12.5 | 6.6 |
| m6a.12xlarge | 48 | 192 | 18.75 | 10 |
| m6a.16xlarge | 64 | 256 | 25 | 13.3 |
| m6a.24xlarge | 96 | 384 | 37.5 | 20 |
| m6a.32xlarge | 128 | 512 | 50 | 26.6 |
| m6a.48xlarge | 192 | 768 | 50 | 40 |
Compared to M5a instances, the new M6a instances offer:
- Larger instance size with 48xlarge with up to 192 vCPUs and 768 GiB of memory, enabling you to consolidate more workloads on a single instance. M6a also offers Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) support for workloads that benefit from lower network latency and highly scalable inter-node communication, such as HPC and video processing.
- Up to 35 percent higher price-performance per vCPU versus comparable M5a instances, up to 50 Gbps of networking speed, and up to 40 Gbps bandwidth of Amazon EBS, more than twice that of M5a instances.
- Always-on memory encryption and support for new AVX2 instructions for accelerating encryption and decryption algorithms
M6a instances expand the 6th generation general-purpose instances portfolio and provide high-performance processing at 10 percent lower cost over comparable x86 instances. M6a instances are suitable for general-purpose workloads such as web servers, application servers, and small data stores.
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