4 ms·
Why buy? As long as you don't care what specific CPUs you're running, it's usually way cheaper to rent. Personal example: Over the course of earning my master'
by bunderbunder 9y ago
Why buy? As long as you don't care what specific CPUs you're running, it's usually way cheaper to rent.
Personal example: Over the course of earning my master's, I was able to use the equivalent of a $FIVE_DIGIT_PRICE computing cluster as often as I cared to, for an ultimate total of $THREE_DIGIT_PRICE.
- dman 9y agoYes that works very well for x86 (of the intel variety) and for GPUS of the Nvidia variety. For other options there isnt much available. Also if you are developing client side software you notice that most popular CPU sku's for consumers dont show up in any cloud, so it is hard to reason about performance without having access to them. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, would be great if someone built a service where one could rent a box with any cpu ever sold in the last 10 years (same with GPUS).
- bunderbunder 9y agoIs there any reason I should care exactly which chips I'm working with, though? If I were buying the hardware, sure. But if I'm renting then it's all just a means to an end.
- dman 9y agoIf you are working on low level code and want to understand how your code behaves on client hardware. Low end chips are the most tricky since their performance profile is markedly different.