AWS Launches Graviton5-Powered EC2 M9g Instances

AWS has made Amazon EC2 M9g and M9gd instances generally available. Both are powered by the new AWS Graviton5 processors, which the company describes as its most powerful and most energy efficient processor built to date.

Graviton5 delivers measurable gains over prior generation. Graviton5 offers up to 25% better compute performance compared to Graviton4-based instances. Specific workload improvements include up to 35% faster performance for web applications, up to 35% for machine learning inference, and up to 30% for databases.

The processor features 192 cores, a 5x larger L3 cache, up to 33% lower inter-core latency, and DDR5 memory. It is the first CPU in the AWS fleet to support PCIe Gen6 and DDR5-8800 memory, delivering the fastest memory of any processor instances in the cloud.

Customer testing showed strong results in preview. ClickHouse saw a 36% performance boost compared to M8g with zero code changes. Honeycomb achieved 36% better throughput per core compared to Graviton4 across a 6-month A/B test of production observability workloads. HubSpot deployed M9g for MySQL databases and saw query duration drop by up to 60%.

M9gd variant adds local storage option. The new M9gd instances provide high-speed, low-latency local NVMe SSD storage for customers who need it. Both M9g and M9gd are built on the sixth-generation AWS Nitro System and offer expanded networking and storage bandwidth.

M9g and M9gd instances deliver up to 15% higher network bandwidth and 20% higher Amazon EBS bandwidth compared to previous generations. These improvements help keep pace with compute growth as workloads become more compute-intensive and data-driven.

Graviton ecosystem now spans massive scale. After five generations of custom silicon and eight years of investment, Graviton powers over 350 instance types serving more than 120,000 customers. The processors support workloads including web applications, microservices, analytics, databases, machine learning inference, electronic design automation, gaming, and video encoding.

Meta is deploying Graviton at scale starting with tens of millions of cores to support its agentic AI efforts. The company is now one of the largest Graviton customers in the world. Graviton5 is built for the shift to agentic AI workloads that involve real-time reasoning, code generation, and orchestration of multi-step tasks.