I agree. A huge GCP VPS with a good GPU attached is very inexpensive when you only start it when you are in a work sprint.
Just this week I have been experimenting with SageMaker and SageMaker Studio. Too early for a real evaluation, but it looks like SageMaker Studio hits many requirements: good for experimenting, run large distributed jobs, good model and code versioning tools, easy to publish REST APIs, etc. Just yesterday someone asked me to review 3rd party tools, and I look forward to getting a better understanding of how SageMaker Studio stacks up against turn-key systems.
I have built my career from standing on the shoulders of giants. I am not shy about just using the results in academic papers, using open source libraries, tools and frameworks, etc. that other people have written.
So, I agree with you that so much can be done on a single beefy VPS, but services and frameworks that allow easy use of multiple servers are also important.
Just this week I have been experimenting with SageMaker and SageMaker Studio. Too early for a real evaluation, but it looks like SageMaker Studio hits many requirements: good for experimenting, run large distributed jobs, good model and code versioning tools, easy to publish REST APIs, etc. Just yesterday someone asked me to review 3rd party tools, and I look forward to getting a better understanding of how SageMaker Studio stacks up against turn-key systems.
I have built my career from standing on the shoulders of giants. I am not shy about just using the results in academic papers, using open source libraries, tools and frameworks, etc. that other people have written.
So, I agree with you that so much can be done on a single beefy VPS, but services and frameworks that allow easy use of multiple servers are also important.