Cloudspecs: Cloud Hardware Evolution Through the Looking Glass
| Paper | Cloudspecs: Cloud Hardware Evolution Through the Looking Glass (PDF) |
| Application | cloudspecs.fyi |
Abstract
Public cloud hardware has evolved rapidly, with vendors offering hundreds of instance types differing in CPU, memory, storage, and networking capabilities. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of cloud hardware trends from 2015 to 2025, focusing on AWS and comparing with other clouds and on-premise hardware. While network bandwidth improved per dollar by one order of magnitude, CPU and DRAM gains are much smaller and NVMe storage performance has stagnated since 2016. A cross-cloud price comparison shows that smaller providers undercut the “big three” hyperscalers by up to 5× for commodity VMs. Our findings reveal shifting bottlenecks and highlight new challenges in designing cost-efficient cloud-native data-intensive systems. An interactive tool supports further exploration of the evolving instance landscape.
