Using google compute engine for tensorflow project

1
votes

Google is offering 300$ for free trail registration for google cloud. I want to use this opportunity to pursue few projects using tensorflow. But unlike AWS, I am not able to find much information on the web regarding how to configure a google compute engine. Can anyone please suggest me or point to resources which will help me?

I already looked into google cloud documentation, while they are clear they really dont give any suggestions as to what kind of CPUs to use or for that matter I cannot see any GPU instances when I tried to create a VM instance. I want to use something on the lines of AWS g2.2xlarge instance.

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tensorflowgoogle-compute-enginegoogle-cloud-ml
Not as easy to use as AWS but their quickstart guides are useful. Here's a list of machine types – FloatingRock
I am not familiar with those machine type. Can you recommend a machine which has similar power to g2.2xlarge. – emperorspride188
GPUs are coming soon to GCP. cloud.google.com/ml offers a managed solution for which you do not need to worry about the machine type. You may find it useful. GPUs will arrive soon there, too, but you can do distributed training without them. – rhaertel80
Also, you probably want a p2 instance type on AWS rather than a g2. – rhaertel80

1 Answers

1
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GPUs on Google Cloud are in alpha: https://cloud.google.com/gpu/ The timeline given for public availability is 2017: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/11/announcing-GPUs-for-Google-Cloud-Platform.html

I would suggest that you think carefully about whether you want to "scale up" (getting a single very powerful machine to do your training) or "scale out" (distributing your training). In many cases, scaling out works out better and cheaper and Tensorflow/CloudML are set up help you do that.

Here are directions on how to get Tensorflow going in a Jupyter notebook on a Google Compute Engine VM: https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/cpb102-cloudml/#0 The first few steps are TensorFlow, the last steps are Cloud ML.