SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A research firm is running a tightly coupled High Performance Computing (HPC) workload on AWS using EC2 instances. The firm needs to minimize network latency and maximize inter-node communication speed. Which network enhancement should the architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose standard Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs) or standard placement groups, overlooking the specialized ultra-low latency requirements of HPC workloads.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Deploy the instances using an Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA).
Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) is a network interface for Amazon EC2 instances that enables customers to run applications requiring high levels of inter-node communications at scale. It uses a custom protocol to provide lower and more consistent latency than traditional TCP/IP stacks used in standard networking.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Enhanced Networking with the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).
Why it's wrong here
Enhanced Networking with ENA provides higher bandwidth and lower CPU utilization compared to traditional network interfaces. While it improves performance for general workloads, it does not provide the specialized OS-bypass capabilities required for the most demanding tightly coupled HPC applications found in research environments.
- ✓
Deploy the instances using an Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA).
Why this is correct
Elastic Fabric Adapter provides OS-bypass capabilities, allowing HPC applications to communicate directly with the network interface hardware. This significantly reduces latency and jitter for Message Passing Interface (MPI) workloads, which is essential for tightly coupled clusters that need to share data rapidly between compute nodes.
- ✗
Use a Spread Placement Group for the EC2 instances.
Why it's wrong here
Spread placement groups place each instance on distinct hardware racks to reduce correlated failures. This strategy is excellent for high availability but actually increases network latency between nodes, making it the opposite of what is required for high-performance computing clusters needing low-latency communication.
- ✗
Implement AWS Global Accelerator for the cluster.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator improves availability and performance for internet-facing applications by routing traffic through the AWS global network. It is not designed for internal inter-node communication within a VPC and would not provide any performance benefits for tightly coupled HPC workloads running on EC2 clusters.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAA-C03 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAA-C03 exam.