The x1.16xlarge pairs 64 vCPU with 976 GiB of RAM, the 15.25 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a memory-optimized instance. In the name, "x" is the extra-memory line, "1" is the generation and "16xlarge" is the size within the x1 family. It runs on High Frequency Intel Xeon E7-8880 v3 (Haswell) at 2.3 GHz, and AWS introduced it in October 2016. AWS has since shipped x2gd and x8i; x2gd.16xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 1,269,505 CoreMark/s against this instance's 1,144,390 — roughly 11% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so x1.16xlarge becomes 7 × mh.vs1.2xlarge (112 vCPU, 896 GiB combined), $6.67/hr on AWS in US East (N. Virginia), from $0.147/hr on Rackspace Spot. 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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x1.16xlarge gives you 64 vCPU and 976 GiB in a single machine. The largest comparable Spot node, mh.vs1.2xlarge, is 16 vCPU and 128 GiB, so the equivalent here is 7 nodes rather than one.
Spot runs as managed Kubernetes, so a 7-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 976 GiB in one process, it does not.
No local diskx1.16xlarge comes with 1 × 1,920 GB SSD attached to the machine. Spot nodes use network storage only, so that disk doesn't come with it. If you were using it as fast scratch space, you'd move to a persistent volume or object storage, which are slower to read.
