News

AWS Boosts Graphics, Desktop Horsepower with 'Pro' Services

• By David Ramel
• 10/22/2018

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) is courting high-end power users with new "Pro" services for cloud-based virtual graphics workstations and desktops.

The new Amazon WorkSpaces GraphicsPro bundles include a dedicated NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPU and 8 GB of GPU memory with storage options that ranges from a 100 GB root and 100 GB user volume sizes to 1 TB volumes each.

"GraphicsPro bundles are ideal for complex graphics applications such as 3D visualizations, 3D rendering, image processing, video encoding, media encoding, seismic visualization, and data mining," the company said. "These applications require the very high-performance graphics processing available with dedicated GPU hardware and lots of GPU memory. With GraphicsPro bundles, you can deploy cloud graphics workstations on-demand and stop buying and managing specialized, expensive physical graphics workstations."

Meanwhile, on the same day (Oct. 18), AWS introduced the Amazon WorkSpaces PowerPro bundle for resource-intensive workloads.

Those bundles feature 8 vCPUs and 32 GiB RAM and are available with volume storage that ranges from an 80 GB root and 100 GB user volume configuration to 1 TB volumes each.

"With PowerPro bundles, developers, scientists, analysts, and engineers can comfortably run CPU and memory-intensive applications using their WorkSpace," AWS said. "Developers can run large compile and development jobs using applications like Visual Studio, IntelliJ, and Eclipse. Engineers and scientists can run complex simulations using tools like MatLab, R, and Octave. You can co-locate large data sets in AWS with your PowerPro WorkSpace to take advantage of AWS high-speed networks for faster modeling and data analysis."

While PowerPro bundles are available in all regions where Amazon WorkSpaces is available, GraphicsPro bundles are available in seven AWS regions: US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Asia Pacific (Singapore).