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Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#51

Post by cperry »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #47

I deeply appreciate Colab. I bought a nice home GPU rig a few years ago, but seldom use it. When I am lightly using Colab I use it for free and when I have more time for personal research the $10/month plan works really well. I can see occasionally paying for the $50/month plan as the need arises in the future. I am working on an AI book in Python. (I usually write about Lisp languages.) About half the examples will…

Thanks! I think people will much prefer this over the current opaque system.

I read every feedback submission in Colab so if you ever have feedback you'd like addressed, send away.

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#52

Post by mark_l_watson »

sabalaba wrote: post #18
discordance wrote: post #10

Have been experimenting lately with GPUs off vast.ai. Has worked well for experiments with Stable Diffusion and is cheap! Any other suggestions for where to rent cheap GPUs? - i've heard about Hetzner ( https://www.hetzner.com/sb?search=gpu ), but they are 1080s.

Lambda has $1.10/hr A100 instances. That's less than half the price of GCP on demand. https://lambdalabs.com/service/gpu-cloud

If I may ask, and if you use Lambda Labs cloud GCP, how do you like it? I have visited their pricing page about ten times, their price for a single A100 is very good, but I haven’t talked to any customers. Do you basically get VPS with a GPU and all the usually software installed, and SSH/Mosh into it?

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#53

Post by cperry »

PotatoMunchkin wrote: post #50
cperry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This increases visibility into your paid compute consumption. Net win for folks. Feature doesn't launch for 30 days, but I can't make any changes like this without changing ToS, which I have to pre-announce.

Just wanted to say thank you for the transparency in posting here; does this mean that for paid users, compute consumption limits will stay the same or go up?

Thanks!

Grand majority of paid users will see no impact to their limits. We do have some bugs where a small fraction of paid users today use more than their quota (Pro+ users burning $100 worth of an A100 when paying us $50), and those folks will see limits, yes, as we fix some loopholes.

I hesitate to post this given the anger I've seen about any changes, but I can't subsidize paid tiers, that gets expensive fast. As best I can tell from looking at prices for competitors in this space, Colab will still be the best value for money. If folks find otherwise, please do tell me where the competitors are sourcing those GPUs for cheaper.

It goes without saying we remain committed to supporting the free tier.

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#54

Post by mardifoufs »

cperry wrote: post #51
mark_l_watson wrote: post #47

I deeply appreciate Colab. I bought a nice home GPU rig a few years ago, but seldom use it. When I am lightly using Colab I use it for free and when I have more time for personal research the $10/month plan works really well. I can see occasionally paying for the $50/month plan as the need arises in the future. I am working on an AI book in Python. (I usually write about Lisp languages.) About half the examples will…

Thanks! I think people will much prefer this over the current opaque system. I read every feedback submission in Colab so if you ever have feedback you'd like addressed, send away.

Thanks a lot for collab, I have access to really powerful compute from my job yet I still find myself using collab a lot. The only problem I had with it was the very vague FAQ and the spotty resource allocations but the new faq is much better. Thanks again!

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#56

Post by TigeriusKirk »

cperry wrote: post #46
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #3

Sigh. Unlikely these changes will be of benefit to us users.

This increases visibility into your paid compute consumption. Net win for folks. Feature doesn't launch for 30 days, but I can't make any changes like this without changing ToS, which I have to pre-announce.

I've been using Colab for a few months as I dive into my personal ML education. Free at first, Pro tier now. It's very handy and I appreciate the product.

I suppose my concern is this - Was Colab using "compute units" internally for limits already? Or was it "as available"? And if so, will my compute units allocation be what it has been or will it be decreasing? To be honest, when I read the email today, I assumed the limits would be tightening. It feels like the sort of thing that happens when a company tightens up on a product. Not really a reflection on you or your product, just past experiences.

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#57

Post by cperry »

mardifoufs wrote: post #54
cperry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I think people will much prefer this over the current opaque system. I read every feedback submission in Colab so if you ever have feedback you'd like addressed, send away.

Thanks a lot for collab, I have access to really powerful compute from my job yet I still find myself using collab a lot. The only problem I had with it was the very vague FAQ and the spotty resource allocations but the new faq is much better. Thanks again!

I hope it works better for you, please send feedback if it doesn't!

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#59

Post by cperry »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #56
cperry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This increases visibility into your paid compute consumption. Net win for folks. Feature doesn't launch for 30 days, but I can't make any changes like this without changing ToS, which I have to pre-announce.

I've been using Colab for a few months as I dive into my personal ML education. Free at first, Pro tier now. It's very handy and I appreciate the product. I suppose my concern is this - Was Colab using "compute units" internally for limits already? Or was it "as available"? And if so, will my compute units allocation be what it has been or will it be decreasing? To be honest, when I read the email today, I assumed th…

Thanks!

Colab has always had a notion of quota for all users. This notion was implemented in a hard to describe way, but we would throttle you as you used more compute without making it clear how or why. This change will make the quota allocation transparent and visible for paid users.

Any limits we're using here are just to ensure you don't use more GPU $ than what you've paid for.

Re: Google Colab Pro is switching to compute credits

#60

Post by 10u152 »

umeshunni wrote: post #22
doesnt_know wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within capitalism, this is everything that exists. The phrase should effectively be banned in all marketing and service contexts across all industries.

Got it. Can't wait to use the communist version of cloud services.

USSR Cloud services !
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