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ai_timelines:2018_price_of_performance_by_tensor_processing_units [2022/09/21 07:37] (current)
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| | ====== 2018 price of performance by Tensor Processing Units ====== |
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| | // Published 13 February, 2018; last updated 16 February, 2018 // |
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| | <p>Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) perform around 1 GFLOPS/$, when purchased as cloud computing.</p> |
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| | ===== Details ===== |
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| | <p>In February 2018, Google Cloud Platform blog says their TPUs can perform up to 180 TFLOPS, and currently cost $6.50/hour.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-1-1092"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1092" title='&#8220;Built with four custom ASICs, each Cloud TPU packs up to 180 teraflops of floating-point performance&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Cloud TPUs are available in limited quantities today and usage is billed by the second at the rate of <a href="https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=3ba6da8e-363f-4708-84a9-adef904128b8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$6.50 USD / Cloud TPU / hour</a>.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html">Google Cloud Platform Blog</a>, https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html [Accessed Feb 13 2018]'><sup>1</sup></a></span> This gives us $171,000 to rent one TPU continually for a roughly three year lifecycle<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-2-1092"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1092" title="We do not know the lifecycle of TPUs, but usually assume a lifecycle of three years for converting per hour and per computer prices for computing hardware."><sup>2</sup></a></span> Which is 1.05 GFLOPS/$.</p> |
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| | <p>This service apparently began on February 12 2018.<span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-3-1092"></span><span class="easy-footnote"><a href="#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1092" title='&#8220;Starting today, <a href="https://cloud.google.com/tpu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cloud TPUs</a> are available in beta on <a href="https://cloud.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Cloud Platform</a> (GCP) to help machine learning (ML) experts train and run their ML models more quickly.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html">Google Cloud Platform Blog</a>, https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html [Dated Feb 12 2018, Accessed Feb 13 2018]'><sup>3</sup></a></span> So this does not appear to be competitive with the cheapest GPUs, in terms of FLOPS/$, or even the cheapest cloud computing.</p> |
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| | <ol class="easy-footnotes-wrapper"> |
| | <li><div class="li"> |
| | <span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-1-1092"></span>“Built with four custom ASICs, each Cloud TPU packs up to 180 teraflops of floating-point performance…” |
| | <p>“Cloud TPUs are available in limited quantities today and usage is billed by the second at the rate of <a href="https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=3ba6da8e-363f-4708-84a9-adef904128b8" rel="noopener" target="_blank">$6.50 USD / Cloud TPU / hour</a>.”</p> |
| | <p><a href="https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html">Google Cloud Platform Blog</a>, https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html [Accessed Feb 13 2018]<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-1-1092"></a></p> |
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| | <span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-2-1092"></span>We do not know the lifecycle of TPUs, but usually assume a lifecycle of three years for converting per hour and per computer prices for computing hardware.<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-2-1092"></a> |
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| | <span class="easy-footnote-margin-adjust" id="easy-footnote-bottom-3-1092"></span>“Starting today, <a href="https://cloud.google.com/tpu/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cloud TPUs</a> are available in beta on <a href="https://cloud.google.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Google Cloud Platform</a> (GCP) to help machine learning (ML) experts train and run their ML models more quickly.” |
| | <p><a href="https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html">Google Cloud Platform Blog</a>, https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/02/Cloud-TPU-machine-learning-accelerators-now-available-in-beta.html [Dated Feb 12 2018, Accessed Feb 13 2018]<a class="easy-footnote-to-top" href="#easy-footnote-3-1092"></a></p> |
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