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Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

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Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#31

Post by yazr »

maltalex wrote: post #24

I don't see what's surprising here. This is the ski rental problem [0]. Would it surprise anyone to learn that renting a car is more expensive in the long run compared to buying one? This is the same thing, only the time scales are different. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_rental_problem

Because the cloud has economies of scale and benefits from specialization (cheaper power, bulk buying prices, remote land prices, etc)

Hence, some of these saving should be passed on to consumers and it should be cheaper.

The counter argument is that the cloud is over-engineered (redundancy, backups, better software) for enterprise customers. You u are paying for all these benefits whether u want to or not.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#32

Post by jo909 »

pizzapill wrote: post #19
bnastic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't stopped Hetzner from offering 1080s in their servers.

The Nvidia driver licenses that prohibit US companies from using the HW are probably void in Germany/EU. Happens a lot.

Since the Eula comes with the driver, hetzner (and other hardware rentals) shouldn't be covered directly. They don't download and install the driver for you, so aren't a party of that contract in any case.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#33

Post by pjc50 »

adrianN wrote: post #22
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course building is cheaper than AWS... Why "of course"? Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart.

Really? Do you count the time needed to make them? Butter, sugar, and flour aren't expensive.

This is usually the case for this kind of thing, yes. Cheap biscuits are a really cheap bulk product while the margins on the fresh ingredients are higher, and people making their own are doing so as a hobby luxury.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#34

Post by gaius »

bnastic wrote: post #13
psergeant wrote: post #4

> Nvidia contractually prohibits the use of GeForce and Titan cards in datacenters. So Amazon and other providers have to use the $8,500 datacenter version of the GPUs, and they have to charge a lot for renting it.

Hasn't stopped Hetzner from offering 1080s in their servers.

Leader GPU too, they are Dutch

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#35

Post by pjc50 »

dagw wrote: post #29

You're forgetting the cost of fighting IT in a bureaucratic corporation to get them to let you buy/run non-standard hardware Much easier to spend huge amounts of money of Azure/AWS and politely tell them it's their own fucking fault when they complain about the costs. (what me? no I'm not bitter, why do you ask?)

This is absolutely the right answer as to how AWS got so big in the first place. Capex and IT are huge pain points. Starting something up on the free tier isn't. Once something's running and providing value, spending money on it becomes a "necessity" and the obstructionism goes away.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#37

Post by d--b »

amelius wrote: post #16
d--b wrote: post #6

Of course building is cheaper than AWS... It also means you need to build the computer, maintain it, upgrade it, store it somewhere, connect it to the internet, and so on. And you can't just scale it if you need to. I mean, the cloud's here for a reason...

> Of course building is cheaper than AWS... Why "of course"? Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart.

> Why "of course"?

Cause AWS is _really_ expensive...

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#38

Post by maltalex »

yazr wrote: post #31
maltalex wrote: post #24

I don't see what's surprising here. This is the ski rental problem [0]. Would it surprise anyone to learn that renting a car is more expensive in the long run compared to buying one? This is the same thing, only the time scales are different. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_rental_problem

Because the cloud has economies of scale and benefits from specialization (cheaper power, bulk buying prices, remote land prices, etc) Hence, some of these saving should be passed on to consumers and it should be cheaper. The counter argument is that the cloud is over-engineered (redundancy, backups, better software) for enterprise customers. You u are paying for all these benefits whether u want to or not.

Most companies you rent stuff from enjoy the benefit of scale. Car rental companies operate cars at a lower cost than the average car owner.

Still, “owning X” and “getting a working X for a while at a time and place most convenient to you” are two different services.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#39

Post by TeMPOraL »

raverbashing wrote: post #28
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course building is cheaper than AWS... Why "of course"? Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart.

> Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart. Yes, but most likely they aren't of comparable quality

Quite likely, the Walmart ones are better, at least if it comes to taste and looks. Unless you're an expert baker. And then your cookies probably still aren't better, you will just claim they are, and it's polite to agree with that assessment. In fact, it's polite in our society to agree that any half-good DIY attempt has better quality than commercial equivalent, even though it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Re: Building your own deep learning computer is 10x cheaper than AWS

#40

Post by NightlyDev »

LeonM wrote: post #3

Own hardware is always cheaper to buy than using a cloud service, but keeping it running 24/7 involves substantial costs. Sure, if you run a solo operation, you can just get up during the night to nurse your server, but at some point that no longer makes sense to do. Somewhere along the way we forgot about this and it's now perfectly normal to run a blog on a GKE 3 VM kubernetes cluster, costing 140 EUR/month.

It's not expensive at all compared to cloud hosting to keep hardware running. Hardware is really stable and usually runs for years without any issues. You can even use colocation and remote hands, it isn't expensive.
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