Using the Cloud TPU through AI Platform

Before we begin, let's briefly discuss the possible costs you might incur in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). All the scripts and examples here are catered to didactic purposes. Therefore, training epochs are usually set to minimally reasonable values. With that in mind, it is still worth noting that as we start to leverage cloud resources, we need to keep in mind the compute cluster's cost. You will find more information on AI Platform training charges here: https://cloud.google.com/ai-platform/training/pricing#examples_calculate_training_cost_using_price_per_hour.

The examples in this book typically use the predefined scale tiers. In the predefined scale tiers listing at the preceding link, you will see the price per hour for different tiers. For example, BASIC_TPU is much more expensive than BASIC_GPU. We will use both in this chapter, as we will learn how to submit a training job to either the TPU or GPU. In my experience, each...