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Google Cloud Will Add GPU Services in Early 2017 (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the finally dept.

Google Cloud will add GPUs as a service early next year, the company has said. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM's Bluemix all already offer GPU as a service. From a report on GeekWire: Google may be seeking to distinguish itself, however, with the variety of GPUs it's offering. They include the AMD FirePro S9300 x2 and two offerings from NVIDIA Tesla: the P100 and the K80. And Google will charge by the minute, not by the hour, making GPU usage more affordable for customers needing it only for short periods. CPU-based machines in the cloud are good for general-purpose computing, but certain tasks such as rendering or large-scale simulations are much faster on specialized processors, Google explained. GPUs contain hundreds of times as many computational cores as CPUs and excel at performing risk analysis, studying molecular binding or optimizing the shape of a turbine blade. Google's GPU services will be available in early 2017 through Google Compute Engine and Google Cloud Machine Learning.

19 comments

  1. Excellent by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    This can be used for bitcoin mining and "deep learning" or possibly "deep learning about bitcoin mining". All I need is some VC backing.

    1. Re:Excellent by lgw · · Score: 2

      Naturally, the slashvertizement for Google cloud doesn't mention that AWS has had GPU instances for years. Azure seems to have had it for a year now. Google is really playing catch-up in cloud services (though they aren't a joke like Oracle).

      I hope Whipslash got a check for this slashvertizement - be good to see some advertizement flowing out of Goggle for once (and anything that keeps /. afloat).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    2. Re:Excellent by BronsCon · · Score: 2

      Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM's Bluemix all already offer GPU as a service.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    3. Re:Excellent by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      This can be used for bitcoin mining

      Nope. You cannot mine bitcoins profitably with a GPU. Not even FPGAs are sufficient. You need ASICs.

      A GPU can give you a few mega-hashes per joule. An FPGA can do about 20 MH/j. The best ASICs can do about 10,000. It is not even close.

      Mining hardware comparison.

    4. Re: Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AWS already offers it, why should I care?

    5. Re: Excellent by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      AWS already offers it, why should I care?

      1. Because competition is good.
      2. Because renting by the minute, rather than the hour, is useful. When developing OpenCL applications, I spend more time debugging and tuning in short bursts, than I do running in production.

    6. Re:Excellent by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      That is why I combine "Deep Learning" with it. Deep learning makes everything possible.

    7. Re:Excellent by vision33r · · Score: 1

      Mining bitcoins using GPU is the most power consuming operation, mining BTC in general is a waste of power what little BTC you can get that requires a ton of electrical power to do so.

    8. Re:Excellent by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Note that "deep learning" doesn't refer to your rectal extractions.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are a lot better cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin. For instance, you could mine Ethereum on a GPU.

    10. Re:Excellent by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      For instance, you could mine Ethereum on a GPU.

      Not anymore. Ethereum ASICs have been available since August. GPUs can no longer compete. Ethereum mining takes much more memory than bitcoin, so it doesn't scale as well when going from GPU to ASIC, but the cost saving is still substantial.

    11. Re:Excellent by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Try reading the 2nd sentence of the 1st line of the story after the headline

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  2. 1000 GPU "Hello World" program by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 1

    The ultimate symbol of wealth, status and power in the geek community.

    1. Re:1000 GPU "Hello World" program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Saying you did it is bullshit and nobody in their right mind would trust it. Being able to prove you did it using something like mining Ethereum is more worthwhile.

  3. Cost? by Visarga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What counts is price and performance. Is there a comparison to other offers?

  4. GaaS by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Should solve our energy issues w/o leaving a big carbon footprint, right?

    1. Re:GaaS by subk · · Score: 1

      Why is this not +5 Funny?

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
  5. Finally GaaS support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    who wants to buy a new gaming computer every 2 years when you can just pay by the minute!