Instances›AWS EC2›f1›f1.16xlarge
Compute
vCPUs64
Memory976 GiB
Mem / vCPU15.25 GiB
ProcessorXeon E5-2686 v4
Clock speed2.3 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
BandwidthN/A
ThroughputN/A
IOPS0
Networking
Performance25 Gigabit
Max ENIsN/A
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
f1.2xlarge8 vCPU · 122 GiB
f1.4xlarge16 vCPU · 244 GiB
f1.16xlarge64 vCPU · 976 GiB
f1.16xlarge

The f1.16xlarge pairs 64 vCPU with 976 GiB of RAM, the 15.25 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a FPGA instance. In the name, "f" is FPGA, "1" is the generation and "16xlarge" is the size within the f1 family. It runs on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) at 2.3 GHz, and AWS introduced it in November 2016. AWS has since shipped f2. Rackspace Spot has no equivalent to offer: the FPGA is the product here, and Spot sells CPU and GPU capacity only. Spot's largest VM tops out at 16 vCPU and 128 GiB, and even that is not the missing piece here. The table below prices what AWS charges; the honest answer on the Spot side is that this workload stays where it is.

Match qualityNo equivalent

f1.16xlarge is FPGA hardware. That accelerator has no counterpart in the Rackspace Spot catalog, and nothing in it emulates one at a speed worth paying for — this is a genuine no-match, not a weak one.

Rackspace Spot sells x86_64 Kubernetes nodes up to 16 vCPU, plus one NVIDIA A30 GPU class. What does move is the CPU half of the pipeline built around the accelerator: ingest, pre- and post-processing, orchestration, and the serving front end. On most accelerator workloads that tier runs continuously while the accelerator itself is duty-cycled, which is where the bill actually accumulates.

Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia$13.200
US Central, Chicagono AWS region
US Central, Dallasno AWS region
Hong Kong
Sydney, Australia$15.848
London, UK
US West, San Jose
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region
US East, N. Virginia 2$13.200
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Custom kernels compiled to FPGA logic
  • ●Workloads where the accelerator is the product
  • ●Hardware-accelerated genomics, finance and analytics
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 976 GiB of RAM
  • ●Parallel work that can occupy 64 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at 25 Gigabit
Avoid if
  • ●The working set needs more than 976 GiB of RAM
  • ●Anything a CPU or GPU already runs well. FPGA development is a project, not a config change.
  • ●More than 15.25 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
  • ●The work is single-threaded. Most of these 64 vCPU would sit idle.
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
Rackspace Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. You pay what the market decides, not a list price.
  • Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. It is the cheapest compute on the internet.
  • Prices are set by supply and demand. You pay what the market decides.
  • Compute is delivered as fully managed Kubernetes. All infrastructure is taken care of.
  • Egress costs $0.01/GB after the free allowance. AWS charges $0.09/GB.
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