AWS Launches EC2 I8g.metal-48xl Instances with Graviton4 Processors

Amazon’s EC2 I8g.metal-48xl instances offer improved compute and storage performance aimed at I/O intensive workloads.

By Alex Mercer · Editorial pseudonym · 2026-03-03 · 1 min read

AI-ASSISTED REPORTING · RETROSPECTIVE ARCHIVE

Retrospective edition: 2026-03-03. Source published: 2026-02-26. Added to this archive: 2026-11-03. This briefing was prepared later from the linked announcement; it was not published on this website on the historical edition date.

Amazon Web Services introduced the I8g.metal-48xl instances powered by the Graviton4 processor, claiming up to 60% higher compute performance over previous I4g models. These instances utilize third generation AWS Nitro SSDs, enhancing real-time storage throughput by up to 65%, and reducing storage I/O latency by up to 60% compared to prior generation Nitro SSDs.

Built on the AWS Nitro System, I8g instances target transactional and real-time database applications, supporting technologies like MySQL, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, and Apache Spark. They offer large memory capacities (up to 1,536 GiB) and substantial local NVMe storage (up to 45 TB), with network bandwidths reaching 100 Gbps and dedicated EBS bandwidth up to 60 Gbps.

Source & further reading

Introducing Amazon EC2 I8g.metal-48xl instances ↗

Source published 2026-02-26. This report was prepared with AI assistance from the linked primary-source material. Claims and limitations should be checked against the original announcement or research.