Amazon Web Services Rolls Out The Big Guns With An 896-Core Cloud Instance Beast
So why is AWS running such a beastly setup? Well, it’s essentially a license to print money, as more and more companies are relying to cloud computing for certain workloads, including large scale databases and AI. According to Liftr Insights, cloud service providers can charge between $150 to $400 per hour for access to their resources, with an average cost of $263.10 and hour.
However, it’s more than just sheer compute that makes it worth it to tap into AWS. CEO of Liftr Insights, Tab Schadt, says that "they spend significant time and money on their market intelligence. Other companies can benefit from their research about what they are offering and where they offer them at a fraction of that cost."
These beefy new instances were initially spotted operating in the East and West coast regions in the United States. However, similar instances popped up in Seoul, South Korea and Sydney, Australia. Liftr Insights says that “deploying to those non-US regions from the start for this 896-core instance is a strong sign of demand in those areas.”
It will be interesting to see if other cloud providers decide to give AWS a run for the money with their own high density instances. Schadt says that his firm will “keep an eye out to see if and when Azure or other cloud providers respond in kind."
The $64,000 question here though is, what CPU platform is powering these monster cloud instances? We've reached out to Liftr for commentary and will report back if a response is received.
