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krokotak47 t1_iwghwko wrote

Reply to comment by Sarah_Rainbow in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek

So cloud computing literally happens in the sky and we don't need hardware for it?

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Sarah_Rainbow t1_iwgikys wrote

Why else would i buy a telescope for?!??

I mean with the cloud you can have your computing power distributed over a larger geographic area, plus the hardware cost is lower and setting it up is relatively simple. I've heard stories from the physics department at UofT where students preferred to use AWS over other available options (supercomputers in Canada) to run their models and stuff.

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Ericchen1248 t1_iwgnt5q wrote

While I don’t know the costs for them. I would wager the students chose to use AWS not because it was cheaper but because registering/queueing for super computer time is a pain/can take a while.

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krokotak47 t1_iwgq1bd wrote

I believe it all comes down to cost. I've seen some calculations on reddit that were like 30k USD for the compute needed on Amazon ( absolutely no idea what the task was, something with GPUs). So that's obviously not possible for many people. What's the price for a supercomputer compared to that? I imagine it may be free for students? In my university you can gain access to serious hardware ( I'm talking powerful servers, not comparable to a supercomputer) by just asking around. What is it like in bigger universities?

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