Discussion Forum

We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, a new instance type specifically designed for high-performance computing (HPC) applications and other demanding network-bound applications. Customers with complex computational workloads such as tightly coupled parallel processes, or with applications sensitive to network performance, can now achieve the same high compute and network performance provided by custom-built infrastructure while benefiting from the elasticity, flexibility and cost advantages of Amazon EC2.

Prior to Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, organizations with advanced HPC needs have been required to fund expensive, in-house compute clusters by purchasing dedicated, purpose-built hardware. As a result, the demand for high-performance cluster computing often exceeds the capacity of many organizations, and many projects are cut altogether or wait in long queues to access shared resources. With Cluster Compute Instances, businesses and researchers now have access to the high-performance computing capabilities they need with pay-as-you-go pricing, the ability to scale on-demand, and no upfront investments.

Cluster Compute Instances provide similar functionality to other Amazon EC2 instances but have been specifically engineered to provide high-performance compute and network capability. Cluster Compute Instances provide more CPU than any other Amazon EC2 instance. Customers can also group Cluster Compute Instances into clusters allowing applications to get the low-latency network performance required for tightly coupled, node-to-node communication (typical of many HPC applications). Cluster Compute Instances also provide significantly increased network throughput making them well suited for customer applications that need to perform network-intensive operations. Depending on usage patterns, applications can see up to 10 times the network throughput of the largest current Amazon EC2 instance types.