What is AWS Graviton? - AWS Graviton Performance Testing: Tips for Independent Software Vendors

What is AWS Graviton?

AWS Graviton processors are custom-built by AWS to deliver the best price performance for cloud workloads. The Graviton processor is one of three processor options and powers Amazon EC2 instance types for general purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized use cases. Instances powered by Graviton are available in most AWS Regions, as well as GovCloud and the AWS China Regions.

Launched in 2019, Graviton2 is the second generation of AWS Graviton processors. Graviton2-based instance types offer up to 40% better price performance compared to fifth generation instances. (The first generation (A1) of Arm-based, Graviton-powered EC2 instances were launched at re:Invent 2018.) The feature set of the Graviton processor is optimized for cloud workloads and offers the following benefits:

  • Large L1 and L2 caches for every virtual central processing unit (vCPU), which means a large portion of your workload will fit in cache without having to go to memory.

  • Every vCPU is a physical core, meaning more isolation between vCPUs and no resource sharing between vCPUs except last level cache and memory system.

  • Cores connected together in a mesh with ~2TB/s of bisection bandwidth, allowing applications to move very quickly from core to core when sharing data.

  • Graviton’s memory architecture means you don’t need to worry where application memory is allocated from, or which cores are running the application.