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Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

cnbc.com

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Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#31

Post by yencabulator »

geodel wrote: post #11
bmau5 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming this has a lot to do with Google's TPUs. Google is well positioned to be the AWS for AIs given the increased efficiency of TPUs, which only they have.

Could be other way round too. Meta wants to use their own data centers capacity for their custom AI solutions. Generic compute and storage for online and batch workloads can be moved to Google cloud infra.

Also, AI training can be centralized but user serving benefits from being close to the user. So Meta might be building huge new data centers for AI training and centralized analytics etc, while using plenty of DCs owned by others around the globe to run their apps.

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#32

Post by richdougherty »

bmau5 wrote: post #4
pwarner wrote: post #3

Meta is planning to spend $65B+ on capex this year. That's a lot of data centers. Why do they need a tiny bit more from Google?

Assuming this has a lot to do with Google's TPUs. Google is well positioned to be the AWS for AIs given the increased efficiency of TPUs, which only they have.

Seems likely because the article says "Meta’s deal with Google is mainly around artificial intelligence infrastructure, said one of the people".

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#33

Post by calmbonsai »

sokoloff wrote: post #9
thevillagechief wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phrasing seems off. Why does Meta care what Google needs? It would seem that it's exactly backwards. Meta needs this because training resources are scarce. And Google is in the enviable position of having TPUs.

I read GP as implying GCP would be inclined to negotiate aggressively to be sure to secure this deal, due to the factors they list. Both companies need to get something out of the deal. Listing the benefits to only one side is probably missing part of the story.

Yes. That was exactly my point.

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#34

Post by calmbonsai »

simoncion wrote: post #15
calmbonsai wrote: post #6

Google needs deal this due to flights away from its cloud. It can't compete with Azure for simple/coarse-grained services and AWS for complex/fine-grained services. Atm, Google cloud is only good for cheap high-ram one-run-centric compute (AWS is cheaper for generic compute and reserved compute), simple container execution (Cloud Run), and ~100 TB bulk storage.

> [GCP] can't compete with Azure... Based on my professional experience, when we ignore cost [0] my ranking of the big three for "plain old computing" (that is, just compute, networking, and storage workloads) is AWS, GCP, Azure. Azure is very, very flaky. Things often break for no clear reason, or things are changed in unexpected ways without warning, and then quietly reverted back. [1] I used to say that the only c…

I concur with your rankings. I was very careful to couch the Google compute cost "win" solely to one-shot-memory-intensive runs--not to any other configuration or long-term reservation.

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#35

Post by simoncion »

calmbonsai wrote: post #34
simoncion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [GCP] can't compete with Azure... Based on my professional experience, when we ignore cost [0] my ranking of the big three for "plain old computing" (that is, just compute, networking, and storage workloads) is AWS, GCP, Azure. Azure is very, very flaky. Things often break for no clear reason, or things are changed in unexpected ways without warning, and then quietly reverted back. [1] I used to say that the only c…

I concur with your rankings. I was very careful to couch the Google compute cost "win" solely to one-shot-memory-intensive runs--not to any other configuration or long-term reservation.

> I was very careful to couch the Google compute cost "win"...

Respectfully, I was very explicit that I was ignoring cost in my ranking.

Azure might have a ton of great features and could be (for all I know) a quarter the cost of GCP. But in my professional experience, I have run into recurring Azure issues that are entirely out of my control that blocked deployment of new VMs for hours and hours (and occasionally days). That's business-disrupting.

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#36

Post by calmbonsai »

mrbungie wrote: post #14
calmbonsai wrote: post #6

Google needs deal this due to flights away from its cloud. It can't compete with Azure for simple/coarse-grained services and AWS for complex/fine-grained services. Atm, Google cloud is only good for cheap high-ram one-run-centric compute (AWS is cheaper for generic compute and reserved compute), simple container execution (Cloud Run), and ~100 TB bulk storage.

> Atm, Google cloud is only good for cheap high-ram one-run-centric compute (AWS is cheaper for generic compute and reserved compute), simple container execution (Cloud Run), and ~100 TB bulk storage. You are crazy if you imply AWS Athena or Azure Synapse are better than BigQuery.

Unfortunately, I've never used BigQuery in production so I don't feel qualified to comment on it.

Re: Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

#37

Post by liuliu »

barkingcat wrote: post #23
okdood64 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> second tier TPU allocation What exactly does this mean?

Probably that there are already several generations of TPU hardware - the best ones go to internal use, while the older hardware gets rented out to gcp to amortize the development costs.

That's correct. Unless Zuck is OK with using one-generation older TPU, which is a possibility.
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