“By doing all the network and storage virtualization in the Nitro controller, we also reduce variability and avoid interfering with customers workloads, which is first and foremost.
“The Nitro controller runs all the AWS code that turns that server into an EC2 instance, and there are a number of benefits to this approach,” he said. The Nitro controller provides the consistency that customers’ workloads demand, he said. “And it remains one of the most important reasons why EC2 provides the best performance and security in the cloud.”Īccording to DeSantis, every EC2 server has a Nitro controller, which embeds the firmware that AWS uses to connect any type of processor (X86, ARM, AMD, Mac, etc.) into its global network. “Nitro is the reason that AWS got started building its own chips,” Peter DeSantis, the general manager for EC2, said during a keynote address at the re:Invent conference Wednesday afternoon. These Nitro chips represent AWS’s first foray into the world of custom silicon, and they form the basis for the Nitro controllers that are the backbone of EC2 today. One of the secret recipes that Amazon Web Services has whipped up that enables it to scale its customers’ workloads to such dizzying heights is its custom-made Nitro chips. Sure, they sound fast, but the Nitro SSDs are no ordinary flash drives.
Looking to serve data to your cloud applications and databases a little faster? Then you might be interested in the new Nitro SSDs that AWS announced this week at re:Invent.