Evolution of AWS EC2 General-Purpose: A 13-Year Performance and Price Analysis - sysbench CPU

Go back to list

Sysbench CPU is an open source micro benchmark tool. Its job is to find the highest number of prime number during a certain amount of time. This test outputs a rate comparable across our different VMs and being a simple operation, it doesn't involve thread cooperation nor intensive RAM usage.

Our testing configuration use a number of thread equal to the CPU number and prime number under 64000. Here's a template of command line:

sysbench --threads=$cpu_number --time=60 cpu --cpu-max-prime=64000 run

{ "configuration": { "chart": { "type": "bar", "polar": false, "zoomType": "", "options3d": {}, "height": 800, "width": null, "margin": null, "inverted": false, "zooming": {} }, "credits": { "enabled": false }, "title": { "text": "" }, "colorAxis": null, "subtitle": { "text": "" }, "xAxis": { "title": { "text": [ "" ], "useHTML": false, "style": { "color": "#666666" } }, "categories": [ "provider__name", "flavor__name" ], "lineWidth": 1, "tickInterval": null, "tickWidth": 0, "tickLength": 10, "tickPixelInterval": null, "plotLines": null, "labels": { "enabled": false, "format": null, "formatter": "", "style": { "color": "#666666", "cursor": "default", "fontSize": "11px" }, "useHTML": false, "step": 0 }, "plotBands": null, "visible": true, "floor": null, "ceiling": null, "type": "linear", "min": null, "gridLineWidth": null, "gridLineColor": null, "minorTickInterval": null, "minorTickWidth": 0, "minTickInterval": null, "startOnTick": true, "endOnTick": null, "tickmarkPlacement": null, "units": null, "minRange": null }, "yAxis": { "title": { "text": [ "Prime number per seconds Higher is better" ], "useHTML": false, "style": { "color": "#666666" } }, "categories": null, "plotLines": null, "plotBands": null, "lineWidth": null, "tickInterval": null, "tickLength": 10, "floor": null, "ceiling": null, "gridLineInterpolation": null, "gridLineWidth": 1, "gridLineColor": "#CCC", "min": null, "max": null, "minorTickInterval": null, "minorTickWidth": 0, "minTickInterval": null, "startOnTick": true, "endOnTick": null, "minRange": null, "type": "linear", "tickmarkPlacement": null, "labels": { "enabled": true, "formatter": null, "style": { "color": "#666666", "cursor": "default", "fontSize": "11px" }, "useHTML": false } }, "zAxis": { "title": { "text": "Prime number per seconds Higher is better" } }, "plotOptions": { "series": { "dataLabels": { "enabled": true, "format": "{series.name}", "distance": 30, "align": "left", "inside": true, "allowOverlap": false, "style": { "fontSize": "17px" } }, "showInLegend": null, "turboThreshold": 1000, "stacking": "", "groupPadding": 0, "centerInCategory": false, "findNearestPointBy": "x" } }, "navigator": { "enabled": false }, "scrollbar": { "enabled": false }, "rangeSelector": { "enabled": false, "inputEnabled": false }, "legend": { "enabled": true, "maxHeight": null, "align": "center", "verticalAlign": "bottom", "layout": "horizontal", "width": null, "margin": 12, "reversed": false }, "series": [ { "name": "Amazon Web Services m3.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 0, 439.6383783783784 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m4.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 1, 409.64849999999996 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 2, 441.46999999999997 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5a.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 3, 355.0794117647059 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5ad.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 4, 354.6327777777778 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5dn.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 5, 435.4452631578947 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5n.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 6, 438.20789473684215 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m5zn.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 7, 615.8658823529412 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6a.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 8, 1284.227894736842 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6g.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 9, 1688.1484 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6gd.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 10, 1688.604411764706 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6i.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 11, 866.4709999999999 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6id.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 12, 854.8549999999999 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6idn.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 13, 847.0245000000001 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m6in.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 14, 866.8095 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m7a.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 15, 1343.9379999999999 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m7g.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 16, 1777.82125 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m7gd.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 17, 1777.8712500000001 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m7i-flex.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 18, 897.5690000000001 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m7i.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 19, 908.492 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m8a.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 20, 1538.8305 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m8g.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 21, 1924.7322222222222 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m8gd.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 22, 1925.1683333333333 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m8i-flex.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 23, 995.2125 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" }, { "name": "Amazon Web Services m8i.2xlarge", "data": [ [ 24, 975.7183333333334 ] ], "grouping": false, "color": "#f7981d" } ], "drilldown": {}, "tooltip": { "enabled": true, "useHTML": false, "format": null, "headerFormat": "", "pointFormat": "{series.name}: {point.y:.1f} num/sec", "footerFormat": "", "shared": false, "outside": false, "valueDecimals": null, "split": false }, "annotations": null }, "hc_type": "chart", "id": "241213274903192841112997650668373533366" }

Observations:

The performance scale is 1:5, from m5a to m8g
For each generation, Graviton processors offer the best performance
For raw performance, AMD leads the x86 architecture performance since the m6a