[HN Gopher] AWS launches ARM-powered Lambdas
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       AWS launches ARM-powered Lambdas
        
       Author : orf
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2021-09-29 21:29 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aws.amazon.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aws.amazon.com)
        
       | DeepYogurt wrote:
       | Doesn't exposing the hardware under the lambda kinda defeat the
       | point of the lambda?
        
         | koolba wrote:
         | Not at all. If you want to run assembly code that targets a
         | specific architecture you need to know what that architecture
         | is going to be. At it heart Lambda is just a Linux container
         | running a CGI app.
        
           | aynyc wrote:
           | Why would you run assembly on lambda?
        
             | nightfly wrote:
             | SIMD is a thing
        
             | stevemk14ebr wrote:
             | Everything is assembly, that's how your CPU works. If you
             | run C code, rust, go whatever you have to Target an
             | architecture so the compiler can generate the correct
             | assembly instructions. Even python or js interpreters must
             | be recompiled per each architecture you wish to run those
             | languages in. Lambda doesn't change that, as the comment
             | above says its just a container
        
             | tehbeard wrote:
             | Better question, why wouldn't you?
             | 
             | If you can compile the single task your lambda will perform
             | down to as close to bare metal as possible, without
             | affecting your workflow, why not?
             | 
             | I use JavaScript in the few lambdas I have because of dev.
             | ex. What little additional cost it would add offset by
             | speed of development for me, and how important speed is to
             | my tasks.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | Unless you want to restrict lambda to only run interpreted code
         | with interpreter & binary dependencies provided by AWS, or run
         | things in emulation, you can't really hide it.
        
       | TeeMassive wrote:
       | Too bad this won't offset the 200%+ additional cost of choosing
       | AWS over self-hosting.
        
         | nightfly wrote:
         | There are time where AWS makes sense, just like there are times
         | where self hosting makes sense.
        
       | 41209 wrote:
       | This is awesome, saving that much money can be great for
       | startups.
       | 
       | Oddly I can't see lambdas being enough of a cost to justify it to
       | hobbyist such as myself.
       | 
       | But this is a great sign of things to come, so much energy is
       | consumed by data centers. Then again, I wonder how much code will
       | randomly break, plus AWS's dependency management is literally
       | bundle it up locally and upload a zip.
       | 
       | What happens if a ARM package can't be built locally.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | > What happens if a ARM package can't be built locally.
         | 
         | An Arm package can only not be built locally if you decline to
         | use tools that'd allow you to do so?
        
       | bashtoni wrote:
       | Sadly no support for Go right now.
        
         | pugz wrote:
         | It works with Go:
         | https://awsteele.com/blog/2021/09/29/graviton2-arm-comes-to-...
        
       | braincode wrote:
       | So good AWS listens to customers:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/braincode/status/1382940634093219840
       | 
       | Now, the SAM-CLI local developer experience is broken in Rust,
       | those would be my next asks for AWS:
       | 
       | https://github.com/umccr/s3-rust-noodles-bam/blob/s3-server/...
        
         | dcu wrote:
         | yes, it's awesome. I also asked about this here:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25267921
         | 
         | hopefully we'll see ML chips on Lambda soon too
        
       | OJFord wrote:
       | This seems pretty huge ('19% better performance at 20% lower
       | cost') considering many (most?) Lambda workloads will be arch-
       | agnostic, not even needing updated scripts/installed libs etc.
       | Then many more will only need a trivial re-compile.
       | 
       | I'm sure they don't need me to tell them they'll be inundated
       | with demand...
        
         | orf wrote:
         | It will probably take a while to ramp up - it's explicitly opt-
         | in and I expect there's a huge amount of existing code that
         | creates lambdas without being able to specify the architecture.
         | For starters example Terraform and Cloudformation don't support
         | it yet. And if you're using a 3rd party layer you need to wait
         | for them to publish a layer that explicitly supports that
         | architecture.
        
           | k__ wrote:
           | According to AWS, CFN rollout is happening right now.
        
             | orf wrote:
             | Sure but then you have the CDK, etc. I'd be interested to
             | know how many people create lambdas in the console and not
             | via some Other tooling, which needs to be updated to
             | support this.
        
               | k__ wrote:
               | CDK support is out too.
        
               | edhzsz wrote:
               | Not saying that you are wrong, but CDK is ready now:
               | https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/releases/tag/v1.125.0
        
           | OJFord wrote:
           | Good point. I'd forgotten memory was the only existing toggle
           | (i.e. no variation of x86 CPUs as on EC2, that 'g' or
           | whatever could just be added to).
        
       | nicois wrote:
       | Hopefully ECS/fargate will also be supported soon. I tried
       | shifting our CI workers to ARM but it resulted in not being able
       | to use them to build ECS images, which was not great.
        
         | tcoff91 wrote:
         | can't you cross-compile x86_64 binaries on an arm machine?
        
         | Kipters wrote:
         | Ditto. My main project & CI are ready to be (cross) compiled to
         | ARM, I'm just waiting for Graviton-powered Fargate.
        
         | slownews45 wrote:
         | I'm using fargate very happily (after price reductions).
         | 
         | For ubuntu / python-slim etc docker images - what changes are
         | needed to let them target ARM (if any).
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-29 23:00 UTC)