[photonthug]

> Not sure why a publicly accessible GPU cluster would be a better solution than the current system of research grants.

You mean a better solution than different teams paying AWS over and over, potentially spending 10x on rent rather than using all that cash as a down payment on actually owning hardware? I can't really speak for the total costs of depreciation/hardware maintenance but renting forever isn't usually a great alternative to buying.

[CardenB]

Do you have some information to share to support your bias against leasing especially with a depreciating asset?

[manux]

In Canada, all three major AI research centers use clusters created with public money. These clusters receive regular additional hardware as new generations of GPUs become available. Considering how these institutions work, I'm pretty confident they've considered the alternatives (renting, AWS, etc). So that's one data point.

[photonthug]

sure, I’ll hand it over after you spend your own time first to show that everything everywhere that’s owned instead of leased is a poor financial decision.

[vasili111]

AWS is not only hardware but also software, documentation, support and more.