Second Generation AMD EPYC Server Processors Come to Google Cloud

New Google Compute Engine N2D virtual machines on second-generation AMD EPYC processors cheaper and faster than existing.

AMD and Google Cloud announced the availability of beta versions of Google Compute Engine N2D virtual machines running on AMD EPYC processors of the second generation. According to partners, the N2D family of virtual machines “will be an excellent choice for users who need to solve both universal and high-performance work tasks that require a balance of computing power and memory.”

The benefits of N2D virtual machines include higher performance. According to the Coremark test, the increase compared to similar N1 instances reaches 39%. At the same time, costs are reduced – according to Google Cloud, customers can save up to 13% compared with comparable N series instances.

Two configuration options are proposed – with 128 and 224 virtual CPUs. They provide an increase in memory bandwidth of up to 70% compared to existing comparable virtual machines in the Google Compute Engine catalog for supercomputing workloads that have high memory bandwidth requirements;

The increased memory bandwidth of the platform and a larger number of cores allows in various tests, including Gromacs and NAMD, to obtain a performance increase of up to 100% compared to virtual CPUs n1-standard-96.

Beta versions of N2D virtual machines on the Google cloud platform are already available to customers in the central United States, Southeast Asia and Western Europe. Google promises to gradually expand the list of regions.