[hyperpallium2]

True, though I think the most ground-breaking stuff is done by people without expensive equipment. e.g. Crypto algorithms themselces weren't prpven using expensive equipment. Tycho had the expensive telescope, but Kepler used his observations to make the breakthrough.

The reason is that if you must use expensive equipmemt within the ongoing process of your trial-and-error, it is not just expensive, but exorbitantly expensive.

Though... I guess youe example of- GPUs aren't that expensive, and can facilitate the reaearch process. OTOH I'm not sure there are breakthroughs being made that way, more iterative progress - the enabling breakthrough, of Deep Learning by Hinton, didn't need GPUs.