# Instance Type

### Instance Type Naming Convention <a href="#instance-type-names" id="instance-type-names"></a>

Instance types are named based on their family, generation, processor family, additional capabilities, and size.

* The first position of the instance type name indicates the instance family, for example `p`.&#x20;
* The second position indicates the instance generation, for example `1`.&#x20;
* The third position indicates the processor family, for example `a`.&#x20;
* The remaining letters before the period indicate additional capabilities, such as instance store volumes.&#x20;
* After the period (`.`) is the instance size, such as `small` or `4xlarge`.

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#### **Instance families**

* **C** – Compute optimized
* **D** – Dense storage
* **F** – FPGA
* **G** – Graphics intensive
* **Hpc** – High performance computing
* **I** – Storage optimized
* **M** – General purpose
* **Mac** – macOS
* **P** – GPU accelerated
* **R** – Memory optimized
* **T** – Burstable performance
* **U** – High memory
* **VT** – Video transcoding
* **X** – Memory intensive

#### **Processor families**

* **a** – AMD processors
* **i** – Intel processors

#### **Additional capabilities**

* **d** – instance store volumes
* **e** – Extra storage or memory
* **z** – High performance
* **flex** – Flex instance