Hardware Requirements for Artificial Intelligence

So you're planning to launch an AI project or startup, or maybe adding an AI-based team to an existing organization. Now, if you want to run machine learning, deep learning, computer vision or other AI-driven research project you can't just buy any off-the-rack computer from an office superstore; you need hardware that can handle your workload. This leaves you with an important decision: build, buy, or rent. In this context, "renting" would generally refer to using cloud compute resources, which tend to be more expensive in the long run, but may be a good choice in some cases (great for startups or when you're not planning on scaling in a big way). This article, however, is concerned with balancing hardware and computational requirements and is based on the assumption that you will be spec'ing custom AI hardware or building an AI computer yourself.