HPC Cloud Updates WE 21 Sep 2025
Updates to AWS, Azure & GCP in the last week relevant for HPC practitioners. HBv5 in preview on Azure, Capacity Blocks on PCS and some interesting data on C3 and C4 VMs on Google in the financial services space.
AWS
You can now use Capacity Blocks with PCS
New EC2 r8gn instance types are now available
NVME stats for your EC2 instances
New Regional Instances: i8ge in Frankfurt, r8i and r8i-flex in Malaysia, Singapore and Frankfurt
Azure
I was wondering how long it would be before this drops. HBv5 VM family now in preview. Something seems off though. The announcement on Azure Release went live this week, the page it links to claims a publish date of Nov 2024 and states the preview will happen in the first half 2025… those times make sense for the release of AMD 5th gen CPUs but don’t line up with reality very well! We’ve signed up to try it out though.
Fernando_Aznar
AMD based confidential VMs now in GA
Want to run multi cloud and shuffle data between clouds. Azure is making it easier (at a a cost)
Google Cloud
Google catches up to AWS to allow you to transfer your data out to another cloud should you wish to change CSPs.
Want to run Lustre on GKE?
Some interesting stats on the C3 and C4 VM types with input from Citadel
