Why do all cloud compute services have GPU quotas?

3 points by quantumdreamer 5y ago ↗ HN

Usually I work off of my own home GPU server but today I wanted to quickly spin up a cloud GPU instance. I tried aws, GCP, OVHCloud and Genesis cloud. All of them have GPU quotas which are 0 by default and one has to create a support ticket to increase it to non-zero values. This means that its impossible to "impulse buy" a GPU instance.

Now I understand that having quotas in place is almost kinda necessary (miners), but I am sure there must be a better way to handle it than setting the default quota to 0.

Any thoughts ?

3 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 17.1 ms ] thread

unbiasedml 5y ago ↗

Fraud defense against bitcoin mining with stolen credit card?

prakhargurunani 5y ago ↗

GPUs consume a lot of power (relatively). Placing restrictions by defaulting to 0 quota is necessary not only to save costs but also helps to prevent mining crypto. They will be in trouble if they are caught providing GPU instances to users for mining.

ilmoi 5y ago ↗

I always found that annoying. My best best is crypto mining defense.

Btw if you're looking for cheap cloud GPUs here's a little side project of mine - https://gpu.land/. You can rent dirt cheap Tesla V100s at $0.99/hr. That's 1/3 of what you'd pay at GCP/AWS/paperspace!

Give it a go and let me know if any questions:)