Evaluating HPC-Style CPU Performance and Cost in Virtualized Cloud Infrastructures

TL;DR

This study compares the performance and cost of HPC-style CPU workloads across major cloud providers and instance types, revealing significant variations that influence workload efficiency and expenses.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive evaluation of cloud provider options for HPC workloads, highlighting performance and cost trade-offs across different CPU architectures.

Findings

AWS offers fastest runtimes but at higher costs.

OCI is most economical but slower than AWS.

GCP's AMD instances outperform Intel, ARM is slower and more expensive.

Abstract

This paper evaluates HPC-style CPU performance and cost in virtualized cloud infrastructures using a subset of OpenMP workloads in the SPEC ACCEL suite. Four major cloud providers by market share AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) are compared across Intel, AMD, and ARM general purpose instance types under both on-demand and one-year discounted pricing. AWS consistently delivers the shortest runtime in all three instance types, yet charges a premium, especially for on-demand usage. OCI emerges as the most economical option across all CPU families, although it generally runs workloads more slowly than AWS. Azure often exhibits mid-range performance and cost, while GCP presents a mixed profile: it sees a notable boost when moving from Intel to AMD. On the other hand, its ARM instance is more than twice as slow as its own AMD offering and remains significantly more expensive. AWS's internal comparisons reveal that its ARM instance can outperform its Intel and AMD siblings by up to 49 percent in runtime. These findings highlight how instance choices and provider selection can yield substantial variations in both runtime and price, indicating that workload priorities, whether raw speed or cost minimization, should guide decisions on instance types.