Google Cloud Platform will offer GPU options next year

Google has announced that early next year it will be adding graphics processing units (GPUs) as a service to its Cloud Platform in order to better compete with its rivals.

GPU as a service is already available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM's Bluemix, but Google's Cloud Platform will seek to differentiate itself by offering a variety of GPUs for customers to choose from. The company will allow users the option to use two AMD FirePro S9300s or either a Nvidia Tesla P100 or K80.

Google has also decided to change the way it prices GPU usage to make it more affordable for its customers. Generally users pay by the hour when using GPU as a service but the company has instead opted to price by the minute so that even smaller organizations and business can make use of its services.

In a blog post, Google highlighted some of the use-case scenarios in which its GPU services would be beneficial, saying: "Complex medical analysis, financial calculations, seismic/subsurface exploration, machine learning, video rendering, transcoding and scientific simulations are just some of the applications that can benefit from the highly parallel compute power of GPUs. GPUs in Google Cloud give you the freedom to focus on solving challenging computational problems while accessing GPU-equipped machines from anywhere".

The company's GPU services will be made available through Google Compute Engine and Google Cloud Machine Learning in early 2017.

Though Google waited longer than its competitors to add GPUs to the Cloud Platform, the company has managed to set itself apart from its rivals in the space by offering its customers a number of GPU configurations to choose from and price incentive to choose its products over competing services.

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