Right, I didn't mean to imply otherwise - but I can see how what I wrote could come off that way. One vCPU is a single hardware thread, which means that on cor

Right, I didn't mean to imply otherwise - but I can see how what I wrote could come off that way. One vCPU is a single hardware thread, which means that on cores without SMT, one vCPU == one core. Since the A72 doesn't have SMT, you get one core per vCPU. So in that sense, you are getting more bang for your buck if you just count physical cores: twice as many cores per vCPU... FWIW, I tried to look up the ECU rating of the new ARM instances but they are listed as "NA" in the EC2 console.