Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its Graviton4 processors, the fourth generation of its Arm-based custom processors. The new part is touted as AWS’s most energy-efficient and high-performance solution for cloud workloads, making it a significant upgrade over its predecessor, Graviton3.
Key Features of Graviton4:
- Enhanced Computing Power: Offers a 30% increase in computing power compared to Graviton3.
- Increased Cores and Memory Bandwidth: The new processor features 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, enabling better performance for demanding applications.
- Launch Instance: Debuts with the Amazon EC2 R8g instance, optimized for high-performance databases, in-memory caches, and big data analytics.
Strategic Implications:
- Performance Improvements:
- Enhanced Capabilities: The Graviton4 chip supports more extensive and complex AI and machine learning workloads and high-performance computing tasks.
- Customer Adoption: AWS reports significant performance gains for early adopters like SAP, Epic Games, and SmugMug, with performance improvements ranging from 25% to 35% over Graviton3.
- Cost Efficiency:
- Price-Performance Value: The Graviton family is designed to offer superior price performance, making it a cost-effective choice for a wide range of applications.
- Operational Savings: Improved throughput and reduced CPU utilization help customers handle larger workloads with fewer resources, leading to cost savings.
- Broad Deployment:
- Extensive Availability: Graviton processors are now available in over 150 EC2 instance types across 30 regions, demonstrating AWS’s commitment to widespread deployment and support.
- Customer Adoption: AWS has more than 50,000 customers using Graviton processors in meaningful capacities, including all of its top 100 customers running production workloads.
- Sustained Innovation:
- Rapid Development Cycle: AWS has maintained a consistent innovation pace, releasing a new Graviton chip approximately every 18 months since 2018.
- Future-Proofing: AWS’s focus on continuous improvement ensures that customers can rely on a steady stream of enhancements and new capabilities.
Analysis
The launch of Graviton4 by AWS continues Amazon’s aggressive cadence of processor updates, offering substantial performance and cost benefits. The new processor will likely intensify competition in the cloud infrastructure market, putting pressure on traditional x86 processor vendors such as AMD and Intel. To maintain their competitive edge, these vendors must accelerate innovation, enhance energy efficiency, and seek strategic collaborations.
AWS’s success with Graviton isn’t going unnoticed by its competitors. While Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure initially offered Arm-based instances with processors from Ampere Computing, both of these CSPs have since announced plans to field their own in-house designs. This is a strong signal that customers like the price/performance offered by the Arm architecture, enough that these cloud giants are willing to make the investment to deliver alternative architectures while also reclaiming some of the margin dollars that would otherwise flow to AMD, Intel, and even Ampere Computing.
Oracle is the only major cloud provider who doesn’t have its own Arm-based design, but it’s also the only public cloud provider with an equity investment in Ampere Computing. That gives the company a different set of incentives when choosing which technology to deploy.
Graviton4 also cements AWS’s leadership in the custom silicon space for cloud computing. With its substantial performance improvements, enhanced capabilities, and cost-efficiency, Graviton4 will no doubt drive further adoption among AWS customers.
