AWS Announces New Memory-Optimized EC2 Instances: Introducing R8i and R8i-flex for Demanding Workloads
Seattle, WA – August 19, 2025 – Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the general availability of a significant expansion to its memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance family with the introduction of Amazon EC2 R8i and Amazon EC2 R8i-flex instances. These new instances are designed to address the escalating demands of memory-intensive applications, offering customers enhanced performance, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for a wide array of workloads.
The increasing complexity and data volumes processed by modern applications, such as in-memory databases, big data analytics, caching fleets, and high-performance computing (HPC), necessitate compute resources with substantial memory capacity and rapid memory access. Recognizing this critical need, AWS has developed the R8i and R8i-flex instances to provide a powerful solution that empowers businesses to unlock greater insights and drive innovation.
Amazon EC2 R8i Instances: Uncompromised Performance
The R8i instances represent a leap forward in memory-optimized compute. Powered by the latest generation of Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, these instances deliver up to 20% more performance compared to previous generation memory-optimized instances. This enhanced performance is a direct result of their increased memory bandwidth and improved CPU architecture.
Key features of the R8i instances include:
- Up to 6 TB of DDR5 Memory: The R8i instances offer an impressive memory capacity, scaling up to 6 terabytes per instance. This allows customers to handle extremely large datasets and complex in-memory operations without the need for extensive data partitioning or complex sharding strategies.
- High Memory Bandwidth: With significantly increased memory bandwidth, the R8i instances ensure that applications can access and process data at an accelerated pace, minimizing latency and maximizing throughput.
- Latest Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors: These instances leverage the cutting-edge capabilities of Intel’s latest processors, providing superior computational power and efficiency for demanding workloads.
- Up to 128 vCPUs: Offering a robust virtual CPU count, the R8i instances can handle a high degree of parallelism, making them ideal for workloads that benefit from concurrent processing.
- Up to 3.8 TB of local NVMe SSD storage: For applications requiring fast local storage, R8i instances come equipped with ample NVMe SSD storage, further contributing to overall performance.
- Enhanced Networking: These instances support up to 200 Gbps of networking throughput, enabling efficient data transfer for distributed applications and large-scale data processing.
The R8i instances are particularly well-suited for:
- SAP HANA: Running in-memory SAP HANA databases, which require substantial memory and high-speed data access for real-time analytics and transactional processing.
- Big Data Analytics: Processing massive datasets with frameworks like Apache Spark and Hadoop, where memory capacity is crucial for performance.
- In-Memory Caches: Deploying large-scale caching solutions such as Redis and Memcached to accelerate application response times.
- High-Performance Computing (HPC): Supporting complex scientific simulations, financial modeling, and other compute-intensive HPC workloads that benefit from extensive memory resources.
Amazon EC2 R8i-flex Instances: Flexible and Cost-Effective
Complementing the R8i instances, AWS is also introducing R8i-flex instances. These instances offer a more flexible and cost-effective option for memory-optimized workloads that may not require the absolute highest performance ceiling of the R8i instances, but still demand significant memory resources.
The R8i-flex instances provide:
- Up to 6 TB of DDR5 Memory: Similar to the R8i instances, R8i-flex also offers generous memory capacities up to 6 TB, catering to memory-rich applications.
- A broader range of instance sizes: The R8i-flex family provides a wider spectrum of instance sizes, allowing customers to fine-tune their resource allocation to match specific workload requirements, potentially leading to cost optimization.
- Excellent price-performance ratio: R8i-flex instances are engineered to deliver a compelling price-performance ratio, making them an attractive choice for organizations looking to maximize their budget without compromising on essential memory capabilities.
The R8i-flex instances are an excellent choice for:
- In-memory analytics and caching: Suitable for a wide range of analytics and caching workloads where the absolute peak performance of R8i might be overkill, but substantial memory remains critical.
- Web and application servers: Supporting high-traffic web applications and backend services that benefit from increased memory to handle concurrent user requests and application state.
- Development and testing environments: Providing ample memory for complex development and testing scenarios, including those involving large datasets or memory-intensive simulations.
“We are thrilled to introduce the R8i and R8i-flex instances, further expanding our comprehensive portfolio of EC2 instances,” said [Insert AWS Spokesperson Name and Title – if available, otherwise omit or use a placeholder like “a spokesperson for AWS”]. “These new memory-optimized instances empower our customers to tackle their most demanding memory-intensive workloads with unprecedented performance and flexibility. Whether it’s accelerating real-time analytics, powering large in-memory databases, or driving scientific discoveries, R8i and R8i-flex provide the robust memory resources needed to innovate and succeed in today’s data-driven world.”
With the introduction of R8i and R8i-flex instances, AWS continues its commitment to providing customers with a broad and deep set of compute options, enabling them to select the most appropriate and cost-effective instances for their diverse application needs. These new offerings are available today in select AWS regions, with broader availability planned in the coming months.
For more detailed information, please visit the official AWS website.
New Memory-Optimized Amazon EC2 R8i and R8i-flex Instances
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