GPU pricing, a bellwether for AI costs, could help IT leaders at budget time

Abstract

GPU instances are “eye-wateringly expensive” at $30+ per hour for high-end configurations on-demand, said Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist at Duckbill, which provides cost analysis tools for cloud providers. “When we talk to people who build a data center, they tell us that everything’s happening on Excel — there’s no real-time pricing there,” Trinh said. Since AI is related to performance, the company is exploring a performance-based pricing model rather than GPU-specific pricing. The company’s technology is among a slew of AI-era chip technologies designed to eke more compute from systems while reducing power consumption.