m8i.12xlarge

Analysis

The m8i.12xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m8i series with 48 vCPUs and 192 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) (up to 3.9 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the m8g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $2.15/hour, 15% less ($282 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m8i-flex.12xlarge at $2.41, the m8gd.12xlarge at $2.77 and the m8a.12xlarge at $2.92.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $1,101 a month per instance: $2.54/hour against $4.05/hour, a 59% spread.

On demand it costs $2.54/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,854 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for general purpose types at the 44th percentile per vCPU ($0.0529 per vCPU-hour) and the 44th percentile per GiB ($0.0132 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the m7i.12xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) ($88.30 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.

Looking beyond its own line, 13 of 36 current types with 48 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the m6g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.85/hour.