It's unclear. I've heard people get the V100 without Colab Pro. Albeit I do use Colab Pro and get a V100 almost each time.

As an aside, if you do get a V100, Colab Pro is by-far the cheapest way to train an AI model. ($10/mo is much, much cheaper than $2.48+/hr on GCP normally!) Although you need to sync checkpoints to off-loaded storage in case the Notebook dies.

> As an aside, if you do get a V100, Colab Pro is by-far the cheapest way to train an AI model.

But others should be aware that you get what you pay for. Google still rate limited me when I used Colab Pro, and I ran into a myriad of other small problems. If that's all one is willing to spend to play with AI, 100% go for it. It's a great place to start. But if you're at all serious and can afford it, I think a local machine with a modest GPU is worth every penny.

Curious; is it better to train locally on something like a 2080ti 11G or go for colab and offload checkpoints to S3?

Asking because it seems V100 performance (or the other colab paid GPU) is worth the occasional instability if you’ve set up checkpoints.

Look under "FP16 16-bit (Half Precision) Floating Point Calculations" on https://www.microway.com/knowledge-center-articles/compariso...

These raw numbers don't tell the whole story, of course. But IMHO, the convenience of a local 2080Ti outweighs the speed benefits of an _somewhat flaky_ V100 via Colab for day-to-day use (unless memory size is an issue, which you can't really get around).

OTOH, for just trying out stuff / one-offs, Colab is perfect - and bonus points if you score a V100.

Alas, only if you live in the US.

Colab Pro isn't available outside the US (without breaking Google's terms).

US and Canada.