The metal-48xl and metal-96xl EC2 instance sizes support the M8 and R8 instance families, powered by custom sixth generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, exclusive to AWS cloud. These instances offer up to 43% improvement in compute performance per vCPU compared to prior generations and feature the latest sixth generation Nitro cards. Network bandwidth reaches up to 600 Gbps on some variants, the highest among enhanced networking EC2 instances, supporting real-time analytics, AI/ML caching layers, and 5G telecommunication network functions.
Storage performance is also enhanced with selected instance types delivering up to 300 Gbps EBS bandwidth and low-latency NVMe local storage, suitable for database workloads, data lakes, and high-performance file systems. Elastic Fabric Adapter support on large instance sizes improves cluster-level networking essential for tightly coupled workloads. These new instances are available in AWS US East (N. Virginia) region.
Source & further reading
Announcing metal-48xl and metal-96xl for Amazon EC2 network/EBS instances ↗Source published 2026-06-09. 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.