Amazon's cloud has traditionally been aimed at startups or websites looking for a cheap way to scale or run some computing intensive tasks. But it's been gradually working its way into another area where cloud computing could have a big effect, high-performance computing (HPC). Now it's launching a new instance type aimed precisely at this type of customers.
"We've pushed the bounds of cloud-based HPC in the past with the introduction of our Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU instances. Both of these instance types have been used in a wide variety of High Performance Computing scenarios," Amazon announced.
"Today we are introducing a new member of the Cluster Compute Family, the Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large. The API name of this instance is cc2.8xlarge so we've taken to calling it the CC2 for short. This instance features some incredible specifications at a remarkably low price," it added.
This will be Amazon Web Services' most powerful instance, if it's pure processor power you're looking for, otherwise the
GPU instances are probably faster for some specialized applications.
The CC2 instance comes packed with two, eight-core Intel Xeon processors. It also crams in 60.5 GB of RAM memory and 3.37 TB of storage. Since these instances are designed with clustering in mind, they're connected via 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
The CC2 instance is available for $2.40, €1.75 per hour, on demand. The
original CC1 instance is now available $1.30, €0.94 per hour.
The new instances helped Amazon move up the ranks of the top 500 supercomputers in the world straight into the
42nd place with a cluster amassing 17,024 cores and 66,000GB of memory. That's enough for 240.09 teraFLOPS, Amazon boasts. Customers can opt for a somewhat smaller cluster, with 290 CC2 instances which can be run for less than $1,000, €729 per hour.
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