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Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

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Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#21

Post by mmt »

1996 wrote: post #11
paulschraven wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA GTX1080 - 0.25 / hour NVIDIA GTX1070 - 0.2 / hour NVIDIA P106-100 - 0.095 / hour (All values in $ I assume)

I hope not, or it is an epic fail 0.25x24x30.5=183 For 100 Eur, or about $120, you can get a 1080 inside A DEDICATED SERVER (!!) at Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu?co... I guess I have a business idea then: charge 0.5/h to rent the 1080, pocket the $63 difference per month and call it profit, undercutting Snark by 33% without even doing any crypto mining or anything on the side. Or,…

> It is nice to be able to put 4x more GPUs online in a few hours instead of a day, but I am not sure it commands a 33% premium except in very specific marginal cases.

I suspect that, in general, it commands an even higher price premium, as irrational as that may seem (or actually be).

This particular business is based off the notion of fixed budgets (and, presumably, short time limits), which means that, no matter how much cheaper over all it is to rent resources for a full month, it's worth the premium to rent as much as you can for a result in 10 days.

This reasonining can apply to an early startup, too (in terms of time-to-market and unpredictable scalability), but it becomes actually-irrational when it's not re-evaluated and a huge premium [1] is being paid for routine, easily-predictable infrastructure sourced from cloud providers.

[1] hundreds of percent, i.e. multiples

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#22

Post by technologia »

davidbuniat wrote: post #18
technologia wrote: post #6

I don't know if I overlooked it, but it doesn't seem possible to delete my account if I so choose.

Just shoot us an email at support@snark.ai, we will handle it :)

I just realized how my commment sounded, sorry about that; I only wanted to make a note of that while I evaluated your platform for broader use.

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#23

Post by mmt »

kowdermeister wrote: post #19
1996 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not, or it is an epic fail 0.25x24x30.5=183 For 100 Eur, or about $120, you can get a 1080 inside A DEDICATED SERVER (!!) at Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu?co... I guess I have a business idea then: charge 0.5/h to rent the 1080, pocket the $63 difference per month and call it profit, undercutting Snark by 33% without even doing any crypto mining or anything on the side. Or,…

wow, thanks, last time I checked (couple of years ago) they had close to none GPU offerings

Wasn't that true, in general, for cloud and VPS providers?

2 years is a Moore's Law doubling, which I've found tends to mean hardware offerings will be different. They're not necessarily dramatically different, if there's no new/unmet market demand, but this was a noteworthy enough one that I was (and still am) touting it as an advantage of own-hardware over cloud infrastructure.

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#24

Post by scottlegrand2 »

davidbuniat wrote: post #14
paulschraven wrote: post #7

Are you planning to add cards manufactured for ML, such as the NVidia Titan V (110 teraflops)?

yes, we are currently focusing on large-scale compute, but we are planning to add more variety for hardware.

Hope you're not planning on putting any of those fancy Titan Vs in a Datacenter! Rumor has it that ever since Baidu installed 100,000 GeForce GPUs in a Datacenter, they've made that against their EULA (unless you're mining cryptocurrencies which is apparently A-OK).

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/servers-sto...

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#25

Post by avarun »

davidbuniat wrote: post #18
technologia wrote: post #6

I don't know if I overlooked it, but it doesn't seem possible to delete my account if I so choose.

Just shoot us an email at support@snark.ai, we will handle it :)

I'm not personally super invested in this, but you might want to check to see if that violates GDPR.

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#26

Post by davidbuniat »

Fede_V wrote: post #3
minimaxir wrote: post #2

So what is the pricing? The website has a login-wall to access the pricing.

I'm sure there is a practical reason why companies do this, but it drives me crazy and makes me want to ignore what could potentially be a really cool idea. Please make the pricing transparent and viewable without a registration.

yeah you are right @Fede_V, sorry about this, just made it public https://lab.snark.ai/pricing

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#27

Post by davidbuniat »

davidbuniat wrote: post #16
minimaxir wrote: post #2

So what is the pricing? The website has a login-wall to access the pricing.

Thanks for raising this, we will put the prices public soon.

[UPDATE] prices are public https://lab.snark.ai/pricing

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#28

Post by davidbuniat »

technologia wrote: post #22
davidbuniat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just shoot us an email at support@snark.ai, we will handle it :)

I just realized how my commment sounded, sorry about that; I only wanted to make a note of that while I evaluated your platform for broader use.

ah no worries, thanks for helping us out! sure will add automatic deletion support.

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#29

Post by davidbuniat »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #24
davidbuniat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, we are currently focusing on large-scale compute, but we are planning to add more variety for hardware.

Hope you're not planning on putting any of those fancy Titan Vs in a Datacenter! Rumor has it that ever since Baidu installed 100,000 GeForce GPUs in a Datacenter, they've made that against their EULA (unless you're mining cryptocurrencies which is apparently A-OK). http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/servers-sto...

Good catch! We don't own hardware ourselves, but we are considering EULA with our partners.

Re: Launch HN: Snark AI (YC S18) – Distributed Low-Cost GPUs for Deep Learning

#30

Post by 1996 »

davidbuniat wrote: post #20
1996 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not, or it is an epic fail 0.25x24x30.5=183 For 100 Eur, or about $120, you can get a 1080 inside A DEDICATED SERVER (!!) at Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu?co... I guess I have a business idea then: charge 0.5/h to rent the 1080, pocket the $63 difference per month and call it profit, undercutting Snark by 33% without even doing any crypto mining or anything on the side. Or,…

Yeah, We present prices on hourly basis and you can spin up pods in matter of seconds. Actually we will try to reach them and see if partnership can make our services even cheaper, thanks for pointing this out.

You should try reaching to them, but considering they have the expertise, that they own their infrastructure, and that they are also rolling out their own cloud offering, I am not really sure what may be their benefit in cooperating with you to alter their base offering.

I do not mean that in a bad way, just in a logical way.

I mean, they are already making a profit at $120/month, so I guess their response to you will be "sure, buy as many servers as you want, price is $120/each". You will be back to square one, trying to sell your hourly services to scientists who need GPUs.

Then the initial problem remain: anyone with a baseline demand for GPUs is better off renting them at hetzner. They can use you for small loads, or unanticipated needs. But then it will be for a short time, before they opt for a monthly rent.

Even then, for this peak demand, you compete straight on against google cloud and aws. You certainly undercut their ridiculous prices, but it is not clear to me how better off I am chosing you compared to hetzner+any other cloud offering.

I am just talking as a prospective client (I often need GPUs!) who fails to see what's unique or interesting in your offer. And if you know less about your competition than your prospective clients, I see that as a bad sign: your offer may not be priced right.

Maybe I am wrong, and you are just aiming for a different kind of clients, with a time-sensitive but less elastic demand, yet not as inelastic as someone who will pay top $ for google or aws? Feel free to explain me if there is business secret at risk here.

Good luck anyway!

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