Amazon Web Services today announced new high-performing x1 instances — virtual slices of physical servers — carrying up to 2TB of RAM and much smaller t2.nano instances.

The x1 instances use Intel Haswell processors with more than 100 cores available, while the t2.nanos are designed to let developers “burst up,” Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels said at the AWS re:Invent conference this morning. The former will arrive in the first half of next year, and the latter will become available later this year.

Details on the x1 and t2.nano instances appear in a new blog post.

The x1 is “the first real use industry-wide of Xeon e7 microprocessor in an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s data center group.

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Intel executive Diane Bryant speaks about Intel's collaboration with Amazon Web Services at the 2015 AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 8.

Above: Intel executive Diane Bryant speaks about Intel’s collaboration with Amazon Web Services at the 2015 AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on October 8.

Image Credit: Screenshot

The launch of new instances has become a sort of tradition at re:Invent.

Sure, AWS has introduced instances at other points this year, including M4, D2, the g2.8xlarge, and the t2.large. But at every re:Invent show since the first one in November 2012, AWS has announced new instances — the cr1.8xlarge and the hs1.8xlarge in 2012, the C3 and I2 in 2013, and the C4 in 2014.

Find all our coverage of AWS re:Invent here.

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