Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of its Graviton5 processor, introducing new performance improvements and enhanced security capabilities for cloud workloads.
The new chip powers 2 Amazon EC2 instance families, M9g for general-purpose workloads and M9gd for applications that require high-speed local storage. Graviton5 is the first generally available deployment of the processor since its preview at re:Invent 2025.
Graviton5 doubles the core count of Graviton4 from 96 to 192 cores. AWS says the new instances deliver up to 25% higher compute performance compared to the previous generation. The processor is built using TSMC’s 3nm process technology and features a redesigned architecture that distributes its 192 cores across 4 chiplets, each equipped with dedicated memory and PCIe controllers.
According to AWS, the new design enables web applications and machine learning inference workloads to run up to 35% faster than on Graviton4.
A key highlight of the launch is the introduction of the Nitro Isolation Engine (NIE), part of AWS’s 6th-generation Nitro System. AWS describes NIE as a dedicated separation kernel designed solely to isolate virtual machines from one another.
Unlike traditional hypervisors that combine multiple functions, the Nitro Isolation Engine focuses exclusively on VM isolation. The existing Nitro hypervisor continues to manage operations such as VM creation, scheduling, migration, and resource allocation, while NIE validates and controls any action involving guest virtual machines.
AWS said the smaller and more focused design allowed the company to formally verify the security of the isolation layer. The engine was developed in Rust and validated using the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant. According to AWS, the verification process involved more than 330,000 lines of machine-checked mathematical proofs.
The company believes this approach provides greater transparency and confidence in how virtual machine isolation is enforced in production cloud environments.
AWS is positioning Graviton5 as a processor optimized for agentic AI workloads. Adoption is already gaining momentum, with Meta signing a multibillion-dollar agreement in April to deploy tens of millions of Graviton cores, while Snowflake committed $6 billion over 5 years. AWS also noted that Uber is using Graviton processors for agentic AI applications.
According to AWS, more than 120,000 customers currently use Graviton-based infrastructure, and Graviton has accounted for over 50% of new CPU capacity added to AWS for the past 3 years.
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