AWS launches Graviton5 chips and M9g EC2 instances

AWS has introduced its Graviton5 processor and new Amazon EC2 M9g instances, which it describes as its most advanced custom chip to date for a broad range of cloud workloads, the company said in a statement.

The launch targets organizations seeking higher performance, lower infrastructure costs and improved energy efficiency as cloud workloads grow in complexity and scale, according to AWS.

The Graviton5-based M9g instances provide up to 25% higher compute performance than the previous generation, with 192 cores in a single package and a 5x larger L3 cache, AWS said. Each core has access to 2.6x more L3 cache than Graviton4, while memory, network and Amazon Elastic Block Store bandwidth are also increased, including up to twice the network bandwidth for the largest instances. Graviton5 uses 3nm process technology and system-level optimizations such as bare-die cooling, and is built on the AWS Nitro System with sixth-generation Nitro Cards and a zero-operator access design.

AWS said Graviton5 introduces the Nitro Isolation Engine, which uses formal verification to provide “mathematical certainty that your workloads are isolated from each other and AWS operators.” The company added that Nitro Isolation Engine’s “minimal, formally verified codebase uses mathematical proofs to ensure it behaves exactly as defined,” and said it will work with customers to give them access to the implementation and resulting proofs. AWS reported that more than half of new CPU capacity added to its cloud for the third consecutive year is powered by Graviton, and that 98% of its top 1,000 EC2 customers, including Adobe, Airbnb, Atlassian, Epic Games, Formula 1, Pinterest, SAP, Siemens, Snowflake and Synopsys, are already using Graviton-based instances.

Customers across industries are reporting performance gains on Graviton5 in early testing, according to AWS. “AWS Graviton5-based Amazon EC2 instances are some of the fastest EC2 instances we have ever tested,” said Denis Sheahan, a principal performance engineer at Airbnb, citing up to 25% improvements over other system architectures of the same generation and up to 20% over Graviton4. Atlassian’s Tibo Delor said testing Jira on M9g instances showed 30% higher performance and 20% lower latency than the prior generation, while SAP’s Stefan Bäuerle reported a 35% to 60% increase in OLTP query performance on SAP HANA Cloud. Siemens and Synopsys also cited double-digit performance and cost improvements on Graviton4 and additional gains on Graviton5 in early tests.

AWS said Graviton5-based M9g instances for general purpose workloads are available in preview now, with C9g instances for compute-intensive workloads and R9g instances for memory-intensive workloads planned for 2026.

The recap

• AWS unveils Graviton5 processor and preview Amazon EC2 M9g instances.
• Graviton5 offers 192 cores, larger cache and higher bandwidth.
• M9g preview available now; C9g and R9g planned for 2026.