Re:EC2's M3 Instances Go Global; Reduced EC2 Charges and Low...
by noelwelsh on Friday February 01, 2013 @05:26AM
(#5150095)
Amazon offers several instance types targeted at high-CPU usage. They typically come with recent CPUs, sometimes GPUs as well. They are decent platforms for CPU intensive stuff.
I recall some benchmarks showing Google's cloud offering (Compute Engine) had better CPU performance than EC2. There are other providers (e.g. Digital Ocean) that might be worth a look -- I expect their hardware is on average much newer than Amazon's.
It really depends on how much your time is worth vs the cost of the jobs you want to run. EC2 is the IBM (or Microsoft, depending on your age) of cloud offerings -- you won't be fired for choosing it, but you might be able to shave some time and $s off by going elsewhere.
I recall some benchmarks showing Google's cloud offering (Compute Engine) had better CPU performance than EC2. There are other providers (e.g. Digital Ocean) that might be worth a look -- I expect their hardware is on average much newer than Amazon's.
It really depends on how much your time is worth vs the cost of the jobs you want to run. EC2 is the IBM (or Microsoft, depending on your age) of cloud offerings -- you won't be fired for choosing it, but you might be able to shave some time and $s off by going elsewhere.