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Of course building is cheaper than AWS... It also means you need to build the computer, maintain it, upgrade it, store it somewhere, connect it to the internet
by d--b 8y ago
Of course building is cheaper than AWS...
It also means you need to build the computer, maintain it, upgrade it, store it somewhere, connect it to the internet, and so on.
And you can't just scale it if you need to.
I mean, the cloud's here for a reason...
- m4r35n357 8y agoThe cloud is there to store data that you don't mind other people seeing, that is all ;)
- amelius 8y ago> Of course building is cheaper than AWS... Why "of course"? Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart.
- adrianN 8y agoReally? Do you count the time needed to make them? Butter, sugar, and flour aren't expensive.
- pjc50 8y agoThis is usually the case for this kind of thing, yes. Cheap biscuits are a really cheap bulk product while the margins on the fresh ingredients are higher, and people making their own are doing so as a hobby luxury.
- snaky 8y agoAnd I wouldn't think those cheap cookies are made from the same quality ingredients you'd made it from.
- pgeorgi 8y agoIf you need 10k cookies every day for multiple years, you're better off building your own bakery. If you need multiple years of continuous DL work, you're better off building your own DL system. If you need 5 cookies today (and maybe the next batch next week), go to Walmart. Same for an one-off DL job.
- badestrand 8y agoAccording to the article you can break even after only two weeks which is far from "10k cookies every day for multiple years".
- woolvalley 8y agoTech employees and maintenance is more expensive on the margin than cookie bakers
- soneil 8y agoI think the analogy holds. The numbers in the article assume constant usage (there is a nod to the cost of static storage, but all the math is done on $3/hr gpu usage, not $0.1/mo/GB storage). So if your usage is 4 hours per week, 50 weeks a year, you hit $600/year of gpu. If your usage is 24 hours a day, you hit $27k. So it's not a clear-cut "buying metal is cheaper" - you have to decide how your usage amortizes. As pgeorgi says, if your demand is a pack of cookies a week, buying a bakery isn't the most cost-efficient way to satisfy that demand.
- v_lisivka 8y agoFor DL time is measured in years*GPU instead of hours.
- dagw 8y agoOnly for niche problems run into by huge companies and research groups. Most 'normal' problems encountered by 'normal' companies don't need anywhere near that much training.
- thisisjeffchen 8y agoDepends on your use case. The more accurate models these days require lots of data with huge models. Machine Translation, Image Generation, Segmentation, etc. Each experiment takes a couple days/weeks to train, so we were encountering long stretches of constant usage.
- raverbashing 8y ago> Last time I checked baking my own cookies is more expensive than just buying a bag at Walmart. Yes, but most likely they aren't of comparable quality
- TeMPOraL 8y agoQuite likely, the Walmart ones are better, at least if it comes to taste and looks. Unless you're an expert baker. And then your cookies probably still aren't better, you will just claim they are, and it's polite to agree with that assessment. In fact, it's polite in our society to agree that any half-good DIY attempt has better quality than commercial equivalent, even though it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
- raverbashing 8y ago> the Walmart ones are better, at least if it comes to taste and looks And awful if you want anything resembling "real food". (Not blaming anyone for buying them, I buy pre-made cookies as well.) But yes, getting a nice looking/tasting cookie might require a few tries.
- snaky 8y agoOnly with taste and looks. Maybe. > Even Walmart’s “Great Value 100% Whole Wheat Bread” contains seven ingredients that Whole Foods considers “unacceptable”: high fructose corn syrup, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated diglycerides, DATEM, azodicarbonamide, ammonium chloride, and calcium propionate. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/whole_foods_and_walmart_how_many_groceries_sold_at_walmart_would_be_banned.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/whole_...
- Thrymr 8y agoIf you had picked another example of pre-made food, I might agree, but cookies are really easy. Just follow the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag, you'll get something that is far better than anything out of a bag that's engineered to sit around in a store for months.
- oneshot908 8y ago
- d--b 8y ago> Why "of course"? Cause AWS is _really_ expensive...
- emptyfile 8y agoIs it really, in America? Amazing. This is not the normal human experience at all. Raw food are usually cheaper than processed ones, anywhere in the world.
- yonkshi 8y agoNot necessarily. E.g. making Ramen noodles, much cheaper to go to a ramen shop than to attempt to make it yourself. Economy of scale.
- dagw 8y agoWhere in the world are you? It's my normal human experience from both the UK and Sweden. Of course the stuff you make from scratch will often have a higher quality (or at least be made from higher quality ingredients) and if you want to buy similar or better quality then it will cost more. But the cheapest chocolate chip cookies you can find in the food store will be cheaper than buying ingredients and baking.
- badpun 8y agoSo, whatever bakery paid for ingredients, wages and owner's profit is still less that what you'd just pay for just the ingredients? What are they putting into these cookies, sawdust?
- pjc50 8y agoThe trick is that the bulk discount (or "small package premium") on the ingredients is huge. Maybe $300 for a tonne versus $1.50 for a kilo of flour? Note that this works for electronics as well. You could buy one resistor for a cent or a thousand of them for a dollar.
- dagw 8y agoWhat are they putting into these cookies Cheap palm oil and other vegetable fats instead of butter, corn syrup instead of cane sugar, much lower quality chocolate than is generally available in grocery stores, various chemical stabilizers instead of eggs, artificial vanilla flavoring instead of real vanilla and so on. Plus they obviously get everything at a massive discount since they're buying everything by the ton instead of by the kg.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gilbetron 8y agohttps://chiefmomofficer.org/2016/11/18/cost-of-cookies-is-it-really-cheaper-to-make-your-own/ https://chiefmomofficer.org/2016/11/18/cost-of-cookies-is-it... The answer is not clear cut!
- walshemj 8y agoYou can always just hook up a new rack to expand on prem HPC