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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

#31

Post by 1996 »

mmt wrote: post #21
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,…

> 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 h…

Indeed, it seems to be a nice business niche: charge a large premium for on-demand services, just hoping that clients are actively irrational in not re-evaluating their needs. Basically, you are betting they are too lazy to be moving over to a better baseline offer. Better: you can encourage this lazyness with lock-in, like Amazon does!!

That being said, cloud hosting is also funny in a different way: it reminds me of the late 90s, when you had to declare your hostname and use a ftp account to upload your files to your host.

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

#32

Post by davidbuniat »

1996 wrote: post #30
davidbuniat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

Those are all good points! We are trying to build a marketplace for large GPU providers to plugin their hardware. This will drive GPU costs to a market price.

We are experimenting with pricing and if you want to rent for a whole month our price will be cheaper than that, email us. Just thinking about efficient utilization, you might end up paying less if you don't have 24/7h jobs running.

At the same time, we are building software stack to utilize these hardware efficiently for Deep Learning applications. We need those resources for offering higher level ML products.

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

#33

Post by TekMol »

Funny, I wanted to take a look at snark.ai to see if it can be used to run WebGL inside a browser.

For some reason, the snark.ai homepage brings my laptop to its knees though. Do I need a GPU cluster to see it?

Anyhow: Can I use snark.ai to run WebGL in a browser?

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

#34

Post by davidbuniat »

TekMol wrote: post #33

Funny, I wanted to take a look at snark.ai to see if it can be used to run WebGL inside a browser. For some reason, the snark.ai homepage brings my laptop to its knees though. Do I need a GPU cluster to see it? Anyhow: Can I use snark.ai to run WebGL in a browser?

Haha, jokingly we use GPUs on our landing page to rent out to others. :D On a side note, animations are slightly tough, need to optimize them.

Regarding WebGL, actually that is an interesting point, would like to know more about the use case.

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

#37

Post by davidbuniat »

wsu718 wrote: post #36

Really interesting. Is storage persistent? Will files get deleted when I stop a machine?

Thanks for asking, thats a good point! Compared to spot/preemptible, your files will be persistent. You can stop your running pod, add more GPUs and then continue training your model.

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

#38

Post by methyl »

avarun wrote: post #25
davidbuniat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't, if they do it after request.

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

#39

Post by TekMol »

davidbuniat wrote: post #34
TekMol wrote: post #33

Funny, I wanted to take a look at snark.ai to see if it can be used to run WebGL inside a browser. For some reason, the snark.ai homepage brings my laptop to its knees though. Do I need a GPU cluster to see it? Anyhow: Can I use snark.ai to run WebGL in a browser?

Haha, jokingly we use GPUs on our landing page to rent out to others. :D On a side note, animations are slightly tough, need to optimize them. Regarding WebGL, actually that is an interesting point, would like to know more about the use case.

WebGL: I mean can I install a desktop environment on your machines, start a browser in it and then WebGL will be fast because it has access to a fast GPU?

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

#40

Post by 1996 »

davidbuniat wrote: post #32
1996 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

Those are all good points! We are trying to build a marketplace for large GPU providers to plugin their hardware. This will drive GPU costs to a market price. We are experimenting with pricing and if you want to rent for a whole month our price will be cheaper than that, email us. Just thinking about efficient utilization, you might end up paying less if you don't have 24/7h jobs running. At the same time, we are bui…

I need things running 24/7 unfortunately. But I won't pretend I know the rest of the market. I just know my small part, where I don't see a good fit.

Anyway, the more competition the better, and I'm sure you will find a place!

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