Layer 2 · head to head
AWS Trainium 2 vs AWS Trainium 3
Region availability against raw capability. On AWS the older part is often the one you can actually get.
| AWS Trainium 2 | AWS Trainium 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Can you get it | Cannot be bought. Exists only inside one cloud, so choosing it is choosing that cloud. | Cannot be bought. Exists only inside one cloud, so choosing it is choosing that cloud. |
| Memory | Not published in directly comparable terms | 144 GB HBM3e per chip |
| Bandwidth | Not published | 4.9 TB/s per chip |
| Compute | Below Trainium 3 | 2.52 PFLOPS FP8 per chip |
| Power | Not published | Not published |
| Interconnect | NeuronLink | NeuronLink |
| Software | AWS Neuron SDK | AWS Neuron SDK |
| Workload | both | both |
AWS Trainium 2
For: The generation currently at widest availability across AWS regions.
The catch: Same AWS lock-in, and region availability is often the real constraint rather than the chip.
Economics: Cheaper per hour than Trainium 3 and frequently the better value for inference that does not need the newer part.
AWS Trainium 3
For: Dense training and inference on AWS. Unlike TPU v7 it is designed for both, which makes it the more honest Trainium-vs-TPU comparison.
The catch: AWS-only, and the Neuron SDK is a third software ecosystem to support alongside CUDA and ROCm. Model coverage is the question to ask, not FLOPS.
Economics: Independent analysis has singled out Trainium as the NVIDIA alternative that actually pays off on cost per token — largely because AWS prices it to move.
Before either — can you power it?
Not published against Not published. In 2026 that comparison usually matters more than the FLOPS one: the US interconnection queue exceeds 2,600 GW with waits approaching five years, and roughly 80% of projects withdraw before energising.
Want this whole layer as one table?
The accelerators on these pages as a single CSV — memory, bandwidth, compute, power, interconnect, software stack, availability, who each part is for and the catch — ready to sort, filter or load into a notebook.
Get the silicon table — free for research and evaluation
Four short lines and the download starts at once (CC-BY-NC-4.0, built from these pages the moment you ask). What you type is used only to answer the request and is never sold. Prefer Hugging Face? Request it there.
Using it inside a product, a client report or anything you sell? That needs a commercial licence.