I really do not like that because the ban feels fuzzy. If you are a researcher exploring those algorithms and using Colab because you have very limited GPU access of you own, you might now be worried that your very own topic of research will get you banned from the ressource you are using.
By default, Google will not allow you to access GPU instances on regular GCP. The GPU quota is initialized to zero and you have to open a support ticket in order to request GPU access, justifying why your use case deserves access. Evidently, "personal research project" is not a valid use case, so that leaves Colab as the only other option in the Google ecosystem.
AWS has a similar quota policy, but they seem less strict about use cases.
I'm not so sure this is true. I was able to get access to a GPU quota of 1 on GCP within 2 minutes. I highly doubt anyone reviewed what I wrote. I'm not sure how many you were requesting access to, but I suspect the main reason for gating higher counts are cost related. Quite obviously they are not cheap.
I've found that it varies. When I was at MIT, students and affiliates got credits and instances like candy (I feel like the school brand lowered friction). But then on Reddit, Stack Overflow, or Github I see a lot of people struggling to get quota (even when paying for the highest Colab tier).
Yes, you do. I went through this exact process in Fall 2021. I invite you to attempt to set up a personal GCP account for hobby use in the current GPU shortage, and share your experience.
No, it was extremely bizarre. They gave the option of escalating to sales, which I did, but all they did was deny my use case again for a lack of business justification. I think they're trying to prevent people from cryptomining, so they're just blanket denying access for small GPU quotas.
That is strange, why wouldn’t they just set the minimum fee at more than what cryptomining can maximally earn, and give unlimited access at those rates?
So, you're right. I started wiht a quota of 1 gpu and can make an instance, but if I request more quota it's immediately turned down (no human involved, afaict). It just says to contact your sales rep. I wasn't aware (wasn't the case when I worked there) they autoreject GPU quota increases.
Anyway, I checked and AWS does the same thing now, too. In fact, AWS took 12 hours to respond (rather than decline immediately), and then said they'd think about it, without a real no.
I checked in on this and they are new controls (new since I last evaluated the cloud using a hobby account) due to miners. ANd the message makes it clear- if you want to proceed, talk to a human. I don't like that but it's the same way it works for my work account.
I’m putting down my pitchfork, this makes all the difference. That’s totally reasonable to stop people abusing a free service (to the detriment of everyone else). Same basket as banning crypto mining as far as I’m concerned.
