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Nvidia GPUs enable nothing, because you can't buy any at reasonable prices.

by fefe23 5y ago

jabbany 5y ago
This argument makes no sense. Consumer GPU pricing (which I'm assuming is what you're referring to) has very little to do with the pro market (industry, research etc.) The researchers are using things like the DGX or RTX A-series. These, while quite expensive, are not that unreasonable when it comes to pricing.
- pepemon 5y ago
  An individual could afford computing power for such research activities (not exactly like this one, but e.g. for personal ML experiments) in 2018-2019 for an adequate price. You were able to buy 2 new RTX2080s for the today price of a used single unit. If you want to tinker and need GPU power today, your best option is to rent special datacenter-approved(tm) GPUs for the really expensive $/h. And you don't own anything afterwards (except if you bought GPU before the end of 2020). Does this make no sense? Is this how technological progress should work?
  - jabbany 5y ago
    2080s? With only 8GB of VRAM that's not even ECC backed? Even for ML model training back then, 8GB was on the small side (a lot of the research repos even had special parameter sets to allow running on consumer level VRAM GPUs). Also, for something like long running bio simulations, you'd probably want to be sure that your memory bits aren't being flipped by other sources -- the extra upfront cost is well worth preventing potentially wrong research results... Nvidia consumer products have been a better value proposition in the past for sure. But they've always done market segmentation. It's not merely a matter of "datacenter-approved(tm) GPU" (though they do also do driver-based segmentation).
  - freemint 5y ago
    If you don't care if some rando who's machine you rented does see what you are doing vast.ai can be a good resource for GPU compute too.
hiptobecubic 5y ago
"That place is so crowded that no one goes there anymore."
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Leela: Did you drive much in the 20th century, Fry? Fry: Nobody in New York drove, there was too much traffic.

Nvidia GPUs enable nothing, because you can't buy any at reasonable prices.

by fefe23 5y ago

Nvidia GPUs enable nothing, because you can't buy any at reasonable prices.

This argument makes no sense. Consumer GPU pricing (which I'm assuming is what you're referring to) has very little to do with the pro market (industry, research etc.) The researchers are using things like the DGX or RTX A-series. These, while quite expensive, are not that unreasonable when it comes to pricing.

pepemon 5y ago
An individual could afford computing power for such research activities (not exactly like this one, but e.g. for personal ML experiments) in 2018-2019 for an adequate price. You were able to buy 2 new RTX2080s for the today price of a used single unit. If you want to tinker and need GPU power today, your best option is to rent special datacenter-approved(tm) GPUs for the really expensive $/h. And you don't own anything afterwards (except if you bought GPU before the end of 2020). Does this make no sense? Is this how technological progress should work?
- jabbany 5y ago
  2080s? With only 8GB of VRAM that's not even ECC backed? Even for ML model training back then, 8GB was on the small side (a lot of the research repos even had special parameter sets to allow running on consumer level VRAM GPUs). Also, for something like long running bio simulations, you'd probably want to be sure that your memory bits aren't being flipped by other sources -- the extra upfront cost is well worth preventing potentially wrong research results... Nvidia consumer products have been a better value proposition in the past for sure. But they've always done market segmentation. It's not merely a matter of "datacenter-approved(tm) GPU" (though they do also do driver-based segmentation).
- freemint 5y ago
  If you don't care if some rando who's machine you rented does see what you are doing vast.ai can be a good resource for GPU compute too.

hiptobecubic 5y ago

"That place is so crowded that no one goes there anymore."

HPsquared 5y ago
Leela: Did you drive much in the 20th century, Fry? Fry: Nobody in New York drove, there was too much traffic.