Choosing the Right Serverless GPU Platform for Global Scale: What to Know Before You Deploy
Blog post from Cerebrium
AI teams increasingly face challenges with accessing powerful GPUs due to the high costs and operational burdens associated with traditional cloud services like AWS, GCP, and Azure. Serverless GPU compute offers a solution by providing on-demand access to GPUs without the need for managing infrastructure, thus addressing issues like idle resource costs, slow scaling, and compliance with geographic data residency requirements. These platforms automatically handle container orchestration, scaling, and load balancing, ensuring that organizations pay only for actual compute time. They source capacity from multiple providers globally to mitigate shortages and maintain compliance with data regulations. Serverless GPU models are particularly beneficial for workloads that experience variable demand, such as model inference, batch jobs, training, experimentation, and real-time applications, as they can scale dynamically without the overhead of managing separate clusters. They also offer flexibility by supporting both GPU and CPU compute, which is essential for complex AI applications that include preprocessing and inference routing. Key factors in choosing a serverless GPU platform include cold start performance, compute variety, multi-region deployment, and compliance standards, with pricing models typically based on per-second usage, allowing for efficient cost management.