HACKER Q&A
📣 karolsputo

Can you get started on GPU programming without having one?


I’m looking to get into GPU programming (especially Nvidia) to expand my AI knowledge and get deeper into the actual training and AI frameworks.

My problem: I don’t own a GPU.

I have a M1 MacBook so connecting a Nvidia GPU is currently out.

Does anybody know how one might get into stuff like that on the cloud?

I’m getting a feeling that I’ll run into so many problems and restrictions that I’ll have to wait until I have enough to build a PC (doing that anyway, just wanted to get started sooner..)

  👤 cheptsov Accepted Answer ✓
There is a lot of options:

Large clouds (rather expensive): AWS, GCP, Azure - consider using spot instances that are cheaper

Free GPU platforms: Colab, Kaggle

ML platforms (cheap GPU): Jarvis Labs, Lambda Labs, TensorDoc, Genesis Cloud

In case you decide to go with AWS, check out dstack.ai, an open-source CLI to run anything on AWS GPU

👤 waynecochran
I do a lot of GPU development using AWS / EC2 / CUDA. If you don’t need tensor cores you can find cheap instances. Helps to have good shell programming skills and a good text editor like emacs. You can use visual studio with an ssh connection if you prefer.
👤 bjourne
Google Colab is one option.
👤 giantg2
Maybe a Jetson Nano?