Amazon EC2 C5/C5d, R5/R5d, M5/M5d, T3 and A1 instances are built on the Nitro System.
Nitro System consist of 3 components:
1. Nitro Cards
VPC Networking
Amazon EBS
Instance Storage
System Controller
2. Nitro Security Chip
Integrated into Motherboard
Protects hardware resources
hardware Root of Trust
3. Nitro Hypervisor
Lightweight Hypervisor
Memory and CPU allocation
Bare Metal-like performance
Deep Dive into Nitro System at reInvent 2018 https://youtu.be/e8DVmwj3OEs
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-29/aws-ec2-virtualization-2017.html
2 Answers
I think eventually everything will be on the Nitro system
I have not read or heard that AWS has a date for having all AMI’s on Nitro, but it’s clear that is their direction. If you look at the list of default AMI’s they are all HVM. Searching for pv or paravirtual brings up almost nothing on aws web sites. I think it’s time that all ACG lectures that cover hypervisors be updated to focus on HVM and Nitro. PV needs to be a footnote for old instances.
Good find ! Considering the performance improvements, I wonder if AWS will migrate all instance types to the new Nitro Hypervisor or just new instance types ?