The c7a.16xlarge is a compute-optimized AWS EC2 instance: 64 vCPU and 128 GiB of memory, 2.00 GiB per vCPU. In the name, "c" stands for compute, "7" is the generation, "a" marks AMD processors and "16xlarge" is the size within the c7a family. It runs on AMD EPYC 9R14 Processor at Up to 3.7 GHz, and AWS introduced it in October 2023. AWS has since shipped c8a and c9g; c8a.16xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 2,600,921 CoreMark/s against this instance's 2,015,219 — roughly 29% more throughput for the same vCPU count. No single Spot node covers 64 vCPU and 128 GiB, so the equivalent is a fleet: 4 × ch.vs1.2xlarge, 64 vCPU and 128 GiB in total, about 95% below the US East (N. Virginia) on-demand rate. Spot delivers compute as managed Kubernetes, so a node pool of that size is the native shape of the answer rather than a workaround — provided the workload scales horizontally.
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c7a.16xlarge gives you 64 vCPU and 128 GiB in a single machine. The largest comparable Spot node, ch.vs1.2xlarge, is 16 vCPU and 32 GiB, so the equivalent here is 4 nodes rather than one.
Spot runs as managed Kubernetes, so a 4-node pool is the normal way to run things rather than a workaround. If your workload already sits behind a load balancer, a queue or a scheduler, it spreads across them without changes. If it needs all 64 cores and 128 GiB in one process, it does not.
