Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute shapes

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Learn OCI

8 min readJul 12, 2023

In OCI you have the capability to use different Processor Vendors with different shapes, based on your need. The first 3 Tabs with the Vendors AMD, Intel, and Ampere will have the latest processor versions. The below analysis is done for the OCI Instances. OCVS will have the available shapes described at the end. An updated list of all shapes can be found here:

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/References/computeshapes.htm

For AMD you will see at the date of this article AMD E4, which has E4-based standard compute. Processor: AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz

You also have the E2.1.Micro Shape, which is the always free tier shape and will allocate one of the available processors.

E2-based, E3-based, or E4-based standard compute. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure assigns one of the following processors:

AMD EPYC 7551. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max boost frequency 3.0 GHz.
AMD EPYC 7742. Base frequency 2.25 GHz, max boost frequency 3.4 GHz.
AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz.

The next generation will be AMD E5(Genoa) and promise a really huge improvement in performance:

https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oci-compute-instances-with-amd-processors-2023-06-13/

In OCI you have this naming convention :

Type Of The Instance.Purpose of the shape. Vendor and Generation of the processor.

Type of the Instance can be:

Based on this Instance Types, we move to the next VM Shapes, and this are:

Older hardware can be identified in the Legacy shapes with the Standard or DenseIO naming convention.

The newer shapes are Flexible ones and they are:

VM.Standard3.Flex (Intel)
VM.Standard.E3.Flex (AMD)
VM.Standard.E4.Flex (AMD)
VM.Standard.A1.Flex (Arm processor from Ampere)
VM.DenseIO.E4.Flex (AMD)
VM.Optimized3.Flex (Intel)

A flexible shape is a shape that lets you customize the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory when launching or resizing your VM. When you create a VM instance using a flexible shape, you select the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory that you need for the workloads that run on the instance. The network bandwidth and number of VNICs scale proportionately with the number of OCPUs. This flexibility lets you build VMs that match your workload, enabling you to optimize performance and minimize cost. Flexible memory is also available on flexible shapes. The amount of memory allowed is based on the number of OCPUs selected.

When you create a flexible VM Instance, take in consideration this ratio:

Designed for large databases, big data workloads, and applications that require high-performance local storage. DenseIO shapes include locally-attached NVMe-based SSDs.

For dense I/O flexible shapes, the following configurations are available:

VM.DenseIO.E4: E4-based dense I/O compute. Processor: AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz.

8 OCPUs, 128 GB memory
16 OCPUs, 256 GB memory
32 OCPUs, 512 GB memory

GPU Shapes

Designed for hardware-accelerated workloads. GPU shapes include Intel or AMD CPUs and NVIDIA graphics processors.

These are the VM GPU series:

VM.GPU2: X7-based GPU compute.
GPU: NVIDIA Tesla P100 16 GB
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz.
VM.GPU3: X7-based GPU compute.
GPU: NVIDIA Tesla V100 16 GB
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz.
VM.GPU.A10: X9-based GPU compute.
GPU: NVIDIA A10 24 GB
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8358. Base frequency 2.6 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.4 GHz.

HPC and Optimized Shapes

Designed for high-performance computing workloads that require high frequency processor cores.

VM.Optimized3: Processor: Intel Xeon 6354. Base frequency 3.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.6 GHz.

If you need more OCPU’s or memory, there is also the option to use Extended Memory Instances. Even if the name states it’s an extended Memory, in reality, you can also extend the number of OCPU’s using this Ratio:

Bare Metal Shapes

BM.Standard3: X9-based standard compute. Processor: Intel Xeon Platinum 8358. Base frequency 2.6 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.4 GHz.
BM.Standard.E4: E4-based standard compute. Processor: AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz.
BM.Standard.A1: Ampere A1 Compute Arm-based standard compute. Each OCPU corresponds to a single hardware execution thread. Processor: Ampere Altra Q80–30. Max frequency 3.0 GHz.

C-States and Frequency Scaling

Modern CPUs transition to a power-saving state (called c-states) when the CPU is idle or underutilized. These c-states start at C0, which is the normal CPU operating mode (the CPU is 100% activated). The higher the c-state, the deeper the sleep mode into which the CPU transitions. The sleep modes work by cutting the clock signal and power from idle units inside the CPU, thereby reducing the energy use. As the CPU transitions to higher c-states (deeper sleep states), the longer it takes to wake up the units that are shut down. This is an undesirable side effect of c-states transitions, because it can slow down a demanding application.

Fortunately, the hypervisor on standard shapes manages this complexity for the end user by preventing transitions to deeper sleep states even when the CPU is underutilized. In addition, it disables c-states when it sees sustained high utilization. When c-states are disabled, the CPU operates in C0 state, where all cores are active at base frequency. Each processor manufacturer names the maximum frequency per core differently; for Intel the maximum frequency is named max turbo frequency, and for AMD it is called max boost frequency. This maximum frequency is realized by the respective CPU’s built-in algorithms when the processor is running in C0 state under normal but sustained load.

Currently, the hypervisor does not allow the client operating system running in the instance to manage the c-states using kernel command line options. The client always shows the base frequency, even when the hypervisor is running the processor at the maximum frequency advertised by the processor.

Bare Metal Dense I/O Shapes

BM.DenseIO.E4: E4-based dense I/O compute. Processor: AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz.

Bare Metal GPU Shapes

Designed for hardware-accelerated workloads. GPU shapes include Intel or AMD CPUs and NVIDIA graphics processors. Some bare metal GPU shapes support cluster networking.

These are the bare metal GPU series:

BM.GPU2: X7-based GPU compute.
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz.
BM.GPU3: X7-based GPU compute.
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M. Base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz.
BM.GPU4: E3-based GPU compute.
CPU: AMD EPYC 7542. Base frequency 2.9 GHz, max boost frequency 3.4 GHz.
BM.GPU.A10: X9-based GPU compute.
CPU: Intel Xeon Platinum 8358. Base frequency 2.6 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.4 GHz.
BM.GPU.A100: E4-based GPU compute.
CPU: AMD EPYC 7J13. Base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.7 GHz.

Bare Matal HPC and Optimized Shapes

BM.Optimized3: Processor: Intel Xeon 6354. Base frequency 3.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.6 GHz.

Dedicated Virtual Machine Host Shapes

Oracle also has the older versions, if the HW is not still in used by other customers. You can check the official documentation related to this shapes:

Previous Generation Bare Metal Shapes

These are the previous generation bare metal shape series.

Previous Generation VM Shapes

These are the previous generation VM shape series.

Oracle Cloud VMWare Services

When you create the SDDC, you will have the option to select between DenseIO Shapes and the announced options BM Standard and GPU shapes.

BM.Standard3: X9-based standard 3rd gen Intel Xeon Platinum 8358 processor (formerly named Ice Lake), base frequency 2.6 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.4 GHz, available in 16-, 32-, 48-, 64- core configurations, with 1-TB RAM, and 100-Gbps network bandwidth.
BM.Standard2.52: X7-based standard Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M, base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz available in 12-, 26-, 38-, 52-core configurations with 768-GB RAM, and 50-Gbps network bandwidth.
BM.StandardE4: E4-based standard compute. 3rd gen AMD EPYC 7J13 processor, base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz, available in 32-, 64-, 96-, 128 core configurations, with 2-TB RAM and 100-Gbps network bandwidth.
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution GPU compute beta: Oracle Cloud VMware Solution BM.GPU.GU1.4 compute shape is powered by four NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPUs, BM.GPU.GU1.4 also runs on Intel 3rd gen Xeon Platinum 8358 BareMetal host with 1 TB of RAM, 100 Gbps of overall network bandwidth, 7.68 TB of raw NVMe internal disk, and support for up to 1 PB of external block storage. Key use cases for this solution include graphics accelerated VDI with VMware Horizon, Microsoft RDS or Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Beta program signup is available for a limited time.

Compute Shape Pricing

You can use the Cost Estimator to estimate your expected monthly project costs with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/#pricing-compute

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/#compute-vmware

For detailed information about billing, see Billing and Cost Management and the Oracle Compute Cloud Services section of Oracle PaaS and IaaS Universal Credits Service Descriptions.

Please take in consideration the OS when doing the computation.