AWS has made R9g and R9gd EC2 instances generally available, marking the rollout of its latest Graviton5-based compute offerings. These memory-optimized instances achieve up to 25% better compute performance than the prior-generation R8g instances built on Graviton4, while incorporating what AWS describes as its most power-efficient processor architecture to date.

The R9g family targets workloads that demand substantial memory capacity, including relational and NoSQL databases, in-memory caching systems like Valkey, Redis, and MemCached, and real-time analytics platforms. The instances also support containerized deployments through Kubernetes, Docker, EKS, and ECS, as well as applications built in C/C++, Rust, Go, Java, Python, .NET Core, Node.js, Ruby, and PHP.

The R9gd variant includes local NVMe-based SSD storage, addressing use cases requiring fast, low-latency local block storage. This configuration suits open-source database deployments, distributed real-time analytics, large in-memory database systems, and substantial caching operations.

Hardware improvements in Graviton5

Compared to Graviton4, the Graviton5 processor introduces several architectural enhancements. Customers migrating from R8g instances gain more performance per vCPU alongside faster memory access, increased network throughput, higher EBS bandwidth, and expanded L3 cache capacity, all while consuming less power.

  • Up to 25% higher compute performance per vCPU
  • DDR5 8800 MT/s memory, up from 5600 MT/s, representing the fastest memory available in cloud infrastructure
  • 5x larger L3 cache to improve data locality
  • Up to 2x higher network and EBS bandwidth for the largest instance sizes, reaching 100 Gbps network and 72 Gbps EBS on the 48xlarge
  • Up to 3x higher packet-processing performance

Both R9g and R9gd instances support Instance Bandwidth Configuration, allowing operators to reallocate bandwidth between EBS and VPC networking in 25% increments. This tuning capability helps optimize performance for workloads with specific bandwidth demands, such as databases and caching layers.

Security and isolation enhancements

The instances run on the AWS Nitro System, which delegates virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware components. This architecture enables near-bare-metal performance while maintaining strong isolation boundaries between customer instances.

R9g and R9gd instances incorporate the Nitro Isolation Engine, a security component first introduced with C9g and M9g instances earlier this year. The engine enforces instance isolation and employs formal verification techniques to provide mathematically rigorous assurances about isolation properties. Nitro Isolation Engine operates as a dedicated component that mediates all access to virtual machine memory, CPU register state, and I/O devices through a minimal API surface. AWS claims this makes Nitro the first formally verified cloud hypervisor, establishing a new standard for mathematically proven cloud security.

Instance sizes and specifications

R9g and R9gd instances are available in 11 sizes, ranging from medium to metal-48xl. The R9gd variant offers identical compute and networking performance to R9g, with the addition of local NVMe-based SSD storage for workloads requiring fast, low-latency scratch space or temporary data caches.

Getting started and migration

Instances can be launched from the Amazon EC2 console using any supported Arm-based AMI. R9g instances support Amazon Linux 2023, Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu 22.04 and later, RHEL 8.4 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 and later, Debian 12 and later, and other major Linux distributions.

For customers running R8g instances, migration requires no code modifications in most cases. Selecting the equivalent R9g instance size allows applications to run with improved performance. Containerized workloads function with Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS, and standard Kubernetes deployments, with multi-arch container images built for Arm64 running without changes.

AWS provides several resources to support adoption: the AWS Graviton Getting Started Guide covers building, running, and optimizing workloads on Graviton-based instances. The Graviton Savings Dashboard tracks cost savings, while AWS Transform automates code transformations for migrating Java applications from x86 to Graviton.

Pricing and regional availability

R9g and R9gd instances are available in US East (N. Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Frankfurt) regions. Purchase options include Savings Plans, On-Demand, Spot Instances, Dedicated Instances, and Dedicated Hosts. Detailed pricing information is available on the Amazon EC2 pricing page.