Instances›AWS EC2›p3›p3.16xlarge
Compute
vCPUs64
Memory488 GiB
Mem / vCPU7.63 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
GPUNVIDIA Tesla V100
Family sizes
p3.2xlarge8 vCPU · 61 GiB
p3.8xlarge32 vCPU · 244 GiB
p3.16xlarge64 vCPU · 488 GiB
p3.16xlarge

The p3.16xlarge pairs 64 vCPU with 488 GiB of RAM, the 7.63 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a GPU instance. In the name, "p" is accelerated computing, "3" is the generation and "16xlarge" is the size within the p3 family. It runs on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) at 2.3 GHz, and AWS introduced it in October 2017. AWS has since shipped p4d and p5. Rackspace Spot has no equivalent to offer: 8 × NVIDIA Tesla V100 wired together behind a high-speed interconnect is one tightly coupled machine, not 8 independent nodes — and that interconnect is usually what the instance was bought for. 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

p3.16xlarge is 8 GPUs (128 GiB VRAM) wired together inside one chassis. The interconnect is what you bought — that is what makes it one accelerator with pooled memory rather than several machines — and Rackspace Spot has nothing that reproduces it. The Spot GPU class is built on the NVIDIA A30 (Ampere, 24 GB VRAM), and separate nodes of it on ordinary datacentre networking are not a substitute for a single interconnect-joined node.

Split the job across independent single-GPU nodes only if it is data-parallel with no per-step synchronisation and the model fits one card. Model-parallel work, or anything synchronising gradients every step, does not survive the move. Rackspace Spot sells x86_64 Kubernetes nodes up to 16 vCPU, plus one NVIDIA A30 GPU class.

Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia$24.480
US Central, Chicagono AWS region
US Central, Dallasno AWS region
Hong Kong
Sydney, Australia$33.872
London, UK$28.712
US West, San Jose
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region
US East, N. Virginia 2$24.480
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Remote graphics workstations and rendering
  • ●CUDA-accelerated batch jobs
  • ●Model inference and embedding generation
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 488 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 488 GiB of RAM
  • ●More than 7.63 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
  • ●Anything the CPU can do fast enough. GPU hours are the most expensive on the price list.
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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