AWS Releases Memory-Optimized R8i Instances with Enhanced Performance in Europe

Amazon EC2 R8i and R8i-flex instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors became available in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, offering gains for memory-intensive workloads and SAP applications.

By Elena Parker · Editorial pseudonym · 2026-09-25 · 1 min read

AI-ASSISTED REPORTING · RETROSPECTIVE ARCHIVE

Retrospective edition: 2026-09-25. Source published: 2026-09-25. 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.

The R8i family provides up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5 times greater memory bandwidth compared to prior Intel-based memory-optimized instance generations. They deliver 20% higher performance than R7i series, with up to 60% improvements for specific workloads such as NGINX and AI recommendation models.

R8i-flex instances introduce memory-optimized Flex configurations for workload efficiency, and R8i offers wide sizing including new large 96xlarge and bare metal options. These SAP-certified instances demonstrate high aSAPs scores, targeting demanding enterprise applications and mission-critical SAP systems.

Source & further reading

Amazon EC2 R8i and R8i-flex instances are now available in additional regions ↗

Source published 2026-09-25. 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.