Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) uses two primary metrics to describe the computing capacity of its instances (virtual servers): ECU and vCPU.
ECU (EC2 Compute Unit)
Definition: ECU is a measurement unit defined by AWS to describe the computing capacity of EC2 instances. It provides a way to compare computing power across different EC2 instance types and configurations.
Purpose: ECU aims to create a standardized computing measurement that enables developers to easily compare the relative computing capacity of various instance types.
Key Points
Calculation: 1 ECU provides CPU capacity equivalent to a 1.0-1.2 GHz Opteron or Xeon processor from 2007.
Use Case: ECU is primarily used to help users more clearly understand the computing capacity of different instances when selecting EC2 instances, enabling them to make informed decisions.
vCPU (Virtual Central Processing Unit)
Definition: A vCPU is a virtual processor, or a logical processor on an EC2 instance.
Detailed Description
Purpose: vCPU is used to describe the multi-threading capability of an instance and represents the number of physical cores allocated to the instance.
Calculation: The number of vCPUs depends on the instance type and the selected instance. For example, some instance types offer up to 96 vCPUs.
Use Case: vCPU is typically used to describe the multi-threading and multi-processing capabilities of an instance, as well as the number of concurrent tasks it can handle.
Key Differences
Measurement Standard:
ECU is an abstract metric used to compare computing capacity between different instances.
vCPU is a more direct metric representing the number of physical cores allocated to an instance.
Usage:
ECU is typically used to compare computing capacity between different instance types and configurations.
vCPU is typically used to understand the concurrent processing capability of an instance.
Calculation Method:
Important Considerations
ECU is defined based on the computing capacity of a baseline processor (Opteron or Xeon processor from 2007).
vCPU is defined based on the number of physical cores of the instance.
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