AppStream 2.0, the application streaming service from Amazon Web Services (AWS), now offers a new instance option to handle graphics-heavy apps.
AWS announced this week that it launched a GPU-optimized AppStream 2.0 instance called Graphics Design. This launch comes just over a month after the unveiling of the first two GPU instances for the offering, Graphics Desktop, and Graphics Pro.
Graphics Design is more flexible in terms of compute and cost than the other two GPU instances. It comes in four sizes, compared to three for Graphics Desktop and one for Graphics Pro.
Its configurations range from stream.graphics-design.large, which contains two virtual CPUs, 7.5GiB of system memory and 1GiB of GPU memory, to stream.graphics-design.4xlarge, with 16 virtual CPUs, 61GiB of system memory and 8GiB of GPU memory.
Graphics Design instances cost between $0.25 an hour and $2 an hour. Graphics Design instances of smaller sizes cost half the price of Graphics Desktop instances and only about one-eighth the Graphics Pro instances.
[Click on the image to see a larger view.] Comparison of three GPU instances for AppStream 2.0. Pricing for AWS’ Northern Virginia region. (Source: AWS). The three AppStream 2.0 GPU instances allow users to stream more graphics-heavy apps, including those geared toward media and high-performance computing.
Graphics Design, the newest, is “ideal to deliver applications that rely upon hardware acceleration of DirectX or OpenGL, OpenCL, or both,” AWS announced in its announcement.
Graphics Design instances use AMD FirePro S7150x2 server GPUs. The other two instances are NVIDIA GPUs and use AMD’s Multiuser GPU technology.
