Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA)

When running tightly coupled applications in a highly iterative fashion (CFD, for example), data must be distributed globally over a cluster for frequent recalculation. In this scenario, inefficiencies or disruptions in the network service can hamper the solution, resulting in a higher turnaround time and wasted compute resources. To better meet the demands of tightly coupled HPC workflows, you can attach an Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) to your instance. EFA is a network interface that enables you to run applications requiring high levels of inter-node communications at scale on HPC clusters.

EFA offers the following benefits:

• Operating System (OS) bypass to reduce overhead

• Enhanced bandwidth

• Consistent, reliable network transport

• Ability to scale to thousands of CPUs or GPUs

For a list of instance types that support EFA, go to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/efa.html#efa-instance-types .