GPU Instances - Concepts

Docker is a platform as a service (PaaS) tool, that uses OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Scaleway provides a number of pre-built Docker images, which allow you to run a Docker container on your GPU Instance and access a pre-installed Pipenv environment ideal for your AI projects.

Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) became a go-to term for the specialized electronic circuits, designed to power graphics on a machine. The term was popularized in the late 1990s by the chip manufacturer NVIDIA. GPUs were originally produced primarily to drive high-quality gaming experiences, producing life-like digital graphics. Today, those capabilities are being harnessed more broadly for data processing, articificial intelligence, rendering and video encoding.

Nvidia is a brand of GPU for the gaming and professional markets. Scaleway GPU Instances are equipped with NVidia GPUs.

Pipenv is a package and dependency manager for Python projects. It harnesses the power of different existing tools, bringing their functionalities together:

• pip for Python package management
• pyenv for Python version management
• Virtualenv for creating different virtual Python environments
• Pipfile for managing project dependencies

Pipenv is pre-installed on all of Scaleway’s AI Docker images for GPU Instances, making it easy to use virtual environments. Pipenv replaces Anaconda for this purpose.