Amazon Web Services' US-EAST-1 region isn't a problem child — it's the region where the cloud behemoth often runs things on a larger scale than anywhere else, and therefore stresses services the most, according to Dave Brown, global veep of computing and networking.

Speaking to The Register at the AWS Summit in Sydney today, Brown defended US-EAST-1, the cloud giant's first region, which has seen more than its fair share of outages over the years. Analyst firm Gartner has even warned that the region is a risk clouded consumers must consider.

Brown argued that the region's age doesn't mean it's less resilient than any other AWS facility, spanning "hundreds" of data centers — but didn't elaborate on whether that means individual halls or kits are considered discrete data centers. US-EAST-1 is known to have six availability zones and ten local zones. Brown confirmed that it is housed in many, many buildings. The region is so large that it is the natural target for early intervention – and therefore early failure.

Speaking about AWS's early efforts, Brown also revealed that the arm-driven Graviton processors it touts as the most cost-effective way to use its cloud started life in another AWS innovation: the Nitro card, which handles networking and security chores to free up servers from managing the workloads that keep AWS running. Nitro became the inspiration for SmartNICs and Data Processing Units – cards that can be mounted on standard servers to relieve housework.