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Linode GPU Instances

blog.linode.com

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Re: Linode GPU Instances

#61

Post by dillonmckay »

svd4anything wrote: post #30
m0zg wrote: post #27

Still way too much money when a 2x 2080Ti comparably specced machine under my desk costs less than 2.5 months of their billing rate, and 4x 1080Ti servers in my garage cost about 1 month of their 4-GPU machine _and_ have more SSD storage. This pricing is totally insane, especially if not billed per-minute (which in Linode's case it is not) and if there are no cheaper preemptible/spot instances.

I’m starting to think one can adopt the simple rule of switch to a DIY build whenever there enough work to keep a GPU busy for 2 months, otherwise if the workload is intermittent then better strategy is leasing, especially considering the purchase cost/performance is constantly dropping.

It would seem there could be a market for multi-month rentals of a ML/gaming rig, with return shipping/packaging?

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#62

Post by PedroBatista »

trsohmers wrote: post #55
IlGrigiore wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reason as a consumer the RTX Titan makes a lot more sense than the RTX 6000, however datacenters are forbidden by Nvidia to use consumer cards [1], therefore their choice makes sense. [1]: http://fortune.com/2018/01/07/nvidia-consumer-video-cards/

Except datacenter is not defined by NVIDIA in their EULA at all, and plenty of large and small datacenters continue to use "consumer cards" regardless of NVIDIA's fear mongering. I know that Tesla, OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, and many others all continue to primarily buy primarily 2080Ti's, RTX Titans, and Titan V's since the EULA change.

How is that even legal and how nvidia gets away with that type of shit?

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#63

Post by PedroBatista »

ksec wrote: post #57
picozeta wrote: post #19

I would go with Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu GTX1080 for 100$ a month. Grantend, it is older, but it still works for DL. Let's say you do 10 experiments a month for ~20 hours. Thats 0.5$/hour and I don't think it is 3 times faster. If you then want to do even more learning the price goes even down. //DISCLAIMER: I do not work for them, but used it for DL in the past and it was fo…

I thought you are not allowed to put Consumer Graphics Card in Datacenter? Or is that prohibited in US only?

Why?! NVIDIA is a police and a sovereign state now?

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#64

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

ksec wrote: post #57
picozeta wrote: post #19

I would go with Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu GTX1080 for 100$ a month. Grantend, it is older, but it still works for DL. Let's say you do 10 experiments a month for ~20 hours. Thats 0.5$/hour and I don't think it is 3 times faster. If you then want to do even more learning the price goes even down. //DISCLAIMER: I do not work for them, but used it for DL in the past and it was fo…

I thought you are not allowed to put Consumer Graphics Card in Datacenter? Or is that prohibited in US only?

Tech speaking it’s nVidia’s GeForce driver that restricts datacenter usage not the card itself.

Not deep dived into it but maybe using nouveau instead of GeForce works around that restriction.

You are allowed to use the driver in data centres for cryptocurrency usage. The EULA limited datacenter usage hasn’t really been challenged in court yet. Both sides would have an argument. NVidia are using the Eula to limit an activity that a user would be allowed to do if the location that activity was different (and not even talking type of industry here, though that’s prob in the Eula too) On the other hand, it’s nVidia’s software, they are free to license it how they like.

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#65

Post by [deleted] »

microtonal wrote: post #43
jamesblonde wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want low cost to compute for Deep Learning and you needs lots of compute and don't want to pay for V100s, then the AMD Vega R7 is the card for you. 700 dollars, 16GB Ram, 1TB of GPU bandwidth (higher than the V100!), works with Tensorflow (pip install tensorflow-rocm), and about 60% of the performance on resnet-50.FP64 is not fully gimped (it is halved, i think - so still quite good). Put lots of them i…

If you really want low cost to compute for Deep Learning and you needs lots of compute and don't want to pay for V100s, then the AMD Vega R7 is the card for you. 700 dollars, 16GB Ram, 1TB of GPU bandwidth (higher than the V100!), works with Tensorflow (pip install tensorflow-rocm), and about 60% of the performance on resnet-50.FP64 is not fully gimped (it is halved, i think - so still quite good). Two of my colleagu…

[deleted]

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#66

Post by chadmeister »

jamesblonde wrote: post #41
Who_me wrote: post #34

Hey peeps full disclosure I work as one of Linode's RnD engineers. I want to try to get to as many of these as I can. One of the biggest questions is why the Quadro RTX 6000? Few things: 1. Cost it has the same performance as the 8000. The difference is 8 more GB of RAM that comes at a steep premium. Cost is important to us as it allows us to be at a more affordable price point. 2. We have all heard or used the Tesla…

If you really want low cost to compute for Deep Learning and you needs lots of compute and don't want to pay for V100s, then the AMD Vega R7 is the card for you. 700 dollars, 16GB Ram, 1TB of GPU bandwidth (higher than the V100!), works with Tensorflow (pip install tensorflow-rocm), and about 60% of the performance on resnet-50.FP64 is not fully gimped (it is halved, i think - so still quite good). Put lots of them i…

This is a terrible suggestion/comparison. AMD has nowhere near the software support in the ML/AI space that Nvidia has. I wish that AMD would invest in a CUDA competitor and break Nvidia's monopoly, but that is not even close to being a reality, unfortunately.

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#67

Post by sannee »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #64
ksec wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you are not allowed to put Consumer Graphics Card in Datacenter? Or is that prohibited in US only?

Tech speaking it’s nVidia’s GeForce driver that restricts datacenter usage not the card itself. Not deep dived into it but maybe using nouveau instead of GeForce works around that restriction. You are allowed to use the driver in data centres for cryptocurrency usage. The EULA limited datacenter usage hasn’t really been challenged in court yet. Both sides would have an argument. NVidia are using the Eula to limit an…

You can't use nouveau for CUDA, which sort of negates the whole point of having a GPU in a server in the first place.

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#68

Post by bin0 »

PedroBatista wrote: post #62
trsohmers wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except datacenter is not defined by NVIDIA in their EULA at all, and plenty of large and small datacenters continue to use "consumer cards" regardless of NVIDIA's fear mongering. I know that Tesla, OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, and many others all continue to primarily buy primarily 2080Ti's, RTX Titans, and Titan V's since the EULA change.

How is that even legal and how nvidia gets away with that type of shit?

Companies make unenforceable claims all the time. That's why we've got courts. Theyr'e almost certainly never going to take any one to court, because if they did, it would get tossed out. They can't pull the same "it's a license to a product" bs media services do. Though they still try with the driver. I think for now, they've just run the numbers and figured out it gives them slightly higher datacenter card sales.

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#69

Post by bin0 »

dillonmckay wrote: post #60
tomxor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What incident are you referring to? (genuine question) As far as standards go, we use Linode and all of our customers (some of them quite demanding about internal security details) have been satisfied with the various acronyms they are accredited with... Although I understand this does not necessarily guarantee anything about response behavior, so interested to hear about past incidents.

There were some compromised accounts via a Coldfusion hack of their admin portal. Not sure if that was isolated. There was something more recent, too. Anyway, happy Linode customer for quite a few years now. My stuff works, no fuss.

Any chance you can provide more information? Linode customer as well; slightly concerned.

Re: Linode GPU Instances

#70

Post by trey-jones »

m0zg wrote: post #27

Still way too much money when a 2x 2080Ti comparably specced machine under my desk costs less than 2.5 months of their billing rate, and 4x 1080Ti servers in my garage cost about 1 month of their 4-GPU machine _and_ have more SSD storage. This pricing is totally insane, especially if not billed per-minute (which in Linode's case it is not) and if there are no cheaper preemptible/spot instances.

What's the cost for power? Serious question, and I'm not suggesting that this cost should account for a large percentage of the price, but genuinely curious. If your GPUs are working every hour of the month for you, how much is it costing you in electricity?
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