Today’s business needs to provide its workforce with access to critical digital tools and data no matter where in the world people are at any time. Cloud-based, virtual machines make it possible for staff to be productive, at their desk, down the hall, working remotely, or at home, using almost any convenient device. Events of the past year turned such flexibility from a goal into what is now becoming the norm across many industries.
That is with one significant exception: the computationally demanding requirements of workflows such as games development, engineering design, and real-time visualization that typically rely on high-performance workstations have presented significant challenges in terms of capability and feasibility. That is where the new Amazon EC2 G4ad instances come in.
What are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G4ad instances?
Powered by 7nm AMD EPYC™ CPUs and AMD Radeon™ PRO GPUs, Amazon EC2 G4ad instances make it possible to deliver high-performance, productive workstation experiences from the cloud to support designers, engineers, and creatives no matter where in the world they work. G4ad instances are available in a variety of sizes with different combinations of vCPUs, memory, GPU memory, and storage to deliver cost-effective performance based on the needs of different use cases.
Best of all, your business can get started with AMD powered G4ad instances in three quick steps:
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Downloading AMD Drivers
By default, an AMD display driver is not installed when you first use the G4ad instance. You can install the drivers by visiting the following tech doc. This tech doc describes how you use following PowerShell script (as shown from the preceding link) from within the Windows instance:
$Bucket = "ec2-amd-windows-drivers" $KeyPrefix = "latest" $LocalPath = "$home\Desktop\AMD" $Objects = Get-S3Object -BucketName $Bucket -KeyPrefix $KeyPrefix -Region us-east-1 foreach ($Object in $Objects) { $LocalFileName = $Object.Key if ($LocalFileName -ne '' -and $Object.Size -ne 0) { $LocalFilePath = Join-Path $LocalPath $LocalFileName Copy-S3Object -BucketName $Bucket -Key $Object.Key -LocalFile $LocalFilePath -Region us-east-1 } }
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Alternatively, you can use an Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) (an image that someone has already created) that already has the AMD driver applied. There are both AWS Marketplace and Community AMIs that already have the AMD driver installed.
A guide for the pragmatic
However, if you are the type of individual that prefers a more practice guide setting up an AWS account and G4ad instances, then you’re in luck!
AMD has crafted an in-depth guide to setting up your AWS environment, from account setup, to choosing the G4ad instance type and selecting a preferred remote protocol. With three guides to choose from, select the version which references your preferred remote protocol supported by G4ad instances 1) NICE DCV 2) Teradici CAS 3) Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
G4ad setup guide (NICE DCV) | G4ad setup guide (Teradici) | G4ad setup guide (RDP) |
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The world is changing fast. Now is a great time to explore the flexibility and agility that G4ad instances powered by AMD technologies can bring to your design and creative pipelines.
Resources:
- Introducing new Amazon EC2 G4ad instance sizes
- Amazon Press Release
- AMD Press Release
- Amazon EC2 G4ad product information
- AMD.com/g4ad
- AMD Radeon Pro V520 Graphics
- AMD and AWS
George Watkins is a Product Marketing Manager for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. Third party marks are for informational purposes only and no endorsement of or by AMD is intended or implied.