Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon Forecast VS Google Cloud TPU

Compare Amazon Forecast VS Google Cloud TPU and see what are their differences

Amazon Forecast logo Amazon Forecast

Accurate time-series forecasting service, based on the same technology used at Amazon.com. No machine learning experience required.

Google Cloud TPU logo Google Cloud TPU

Custom-built for machine learning workloads, Cloud TPUs accelerate training and inference at scale.
  • Amazon Forecast Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-02-05
  • Google Cloud TPU Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19

Amazon Forecast features and specs

  • Automated Machine Learning
    Amazon Forecast automates the machine learning process, including data preprocessing and training, allowing users to generate accurate forecasts without requiring expert-level knowledge in machine learning.
  • Integration with AWS Ecosystem
    Seamless integration with other AWS services, such as S3 and Redshift, helps streamline data input/output operations and leverages the existing AWS infrastructure for a more robust and scalable forecasting solution.
  • Variety of Algorithms
    Offers a range of sophisticated algorithms, including deep learning techniques, that are pre-built and optimized to handle different types of forecasting problems.
  • Scalability
    Capable of handling large datasets and can easily scale to meet the demands of enterprise-level applications, making it suitable for industries that require processing large volumes of data.
  • Customizable
    Allows users to customize forecasts with additional variables, fine-tune model parameters, and incorporate domain-specific knowledge to enhance accuracy.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Forecast

  • Cost
    The pay-as-you-go pricing model can become expensive, particularly for extensive and frequent forecasting tasks, making it less accessible for small businesses or projects with limited budgets.
  • Learning Curve
    Users may still face a learning curve to fully understand and utilize all the advanced functionalities and customization options, especially if they are not already familiar with the AWS ecosystem.
  • Data Preparation
    Although many processes are automated, users must still prepare and clean their data to a certain extent, which can be time-consuming and requires a good understanding of their data.
  • Limited to AWS Environment
    Being an AWS service, it may not integrate as easily with systems outside of the AWS ecosystem, potentially limiting flexibility for users who operate a multi-cloud strategy.
  • Complexity in Fine-Tuning
    While there are options to customize and fine-tune, the complexity can be overwhelming for users who are not machine learning experts, potentially leading to suboptimal forecast models if not handled properly.

Google Cloud TPU features and specs

  • High Performance
    Google Cloud TPUs are optimized for high-performance machine learning tasks, particularly deep learning. They can significantly speed up the training of large ML models compared to traditional CPUs and GPUs.
  • Scalability
    TPUs offer excellent scalability options, allowing users to handle extensive datasets and large models efficiently. Google Cloud allows the deployment of TPU pods that can further scale computational resources.
  • Ease of Integration
    TPUs are well-integrated within the Google Cloud ecosystem, offering ease of use with TensorFlow. This can simplify the workflow for developers who are already using Google Cloud and TensorFlow.
  • Cost-Effective
    Google Cloud TPUs can be more cost-effective for large-scale machine learning tasks, providing substantial computing power for the price compared to equivalent GPU instances.
  • Purpose-Built Hardware
    TPUs are specifically designed to accelerate ML tasks, making them more efficient for specific deep learning operations such as matrix multiplications, which are common in neural networks.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud TPU

  • Limited Compatibility
    While TPUs are highly optimized for TensorFlow, they offer limited compatibility with other deep learning frameworks, which might restrict their usability for some projects.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers may face a learning curve when transitioning to TPUs from more traditional hardware like CPUs and GPUs, especially if they are not deeply familiar with TensorFlow.
  • Less Flexibility
    TPUs are less versatile for general computing tasks compared to CPUs and GPUs. They are highly specialized, making them less suitable for applications outside of specific ML tasks.
  • Regional Availability
    Availability of TPU resources may be limited to specific regions, which could pose a constraint for some users needing resources in particular geographical locations.
  • Cost Considerations for Smaller Tasks
    While TPUs can be cost-effective for large scale operations, they might not be the most economical choice for smaller, less computationally intensive tasks due to over-provisioning.

Amazon Forecast videos

Learn How to Accurately Forecast Demand with Amazon Forecast - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon Forecast Overview
  • Review - AWS re:Invent 2020: Building a successful inventory planning solution with Amazon Forecast

Google Cloud TPU videos

No Google Cloud TPU videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon Forecast and Google Cloud TPU)
Data Science And Machine Learning
Data Dashboard
39 39%
61% 61
Data Science Tools
32 32%
68% 68
Technical Computing
55 55%
45% 45

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Google Cloud TPU might be a bit more popular than Amazon Forecast. We know about 6 links to it since March 2021 and only 5 links to Amazon Forecast. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon Forecast mentions (5)

  • TimesFM (Time Series Foundation Model) for time-series forecasting
    They also have Amazon Forecast with different algos - https://aws.amazon.com/forecast/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Beginning the Journey into ML, AI and GenAI on AWS
    Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is a type of artificial intelligence that can generate text, images, or other media using generative models. AWS offers a range of services for building and scaling generative AI applications, including Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Rekognition, AWS DeepRacer, and Amazon Forecast. AWS has also invested in developing foundation models (FMs) for generative AI, which are... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • [Discussion] Amazon's AutoML vs. open source statistical methods
    In this reproducible experiment, we compare Amazon Forecast and StatsForecast a python open-source library for statistical methods. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How to forecast or predict data?
    It sounds like you need something that mostly runs itself, without you necessarily needing to have in-depth knowledge of time series modeling. If you have an AWS account, I'd recommend checking out Amazon Forecast. One of the recommendations I saw in this thread is to run auto.arima in R. That's actually one of the algorithms AWS will run for you, among others. I don't know if it handles differencing and... Source: over 3 years ago
  • AWS Machine Learning Tools in 2021
    With the help of Amazon Forecast, the forecasting technology at the heart of Amazon.com, it is now possible to build forecasting models for your own applications. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

Google Cloud TPU mentions (6)

  • AI Model Optimization on AWS Inferentia and Trainium
    Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash We are in a golden age of AI, with cutting-edge models disrupting industries and poised to transform life as we know it. Powering these advancements are increasingly powerful AI accelerators, such as NVIDIA H100 GPUs, Google Cloud TPUs, AWS's Trainium and Inferentia chips, and more. With the growing number of options comes the challenge of selecting the most optimal... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Pathways Language Model (Palm): 540B Parameters for Breakthrough Perf
    According to https://cloud.google.com/tpu, each individual TPUv3 has 420 Teraflops, and TPUv4 is supposed to double that performance, so if that guess is correct, it should take a few seconds to do inference. Quite impressive really. - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • The AI Research SuperCluster
    You can also rent a cloud TPU-v4 pod (https://cloud.google.com/tpu) which 4096 TPUv-4 chips with fast interconnect, amounting to around 1.1 exaflops of compute. It won't be cheap though (excess of 20M$/year I believe). - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • Stadia's future includes running the backend of other streaming platforms, job listing reveals
    Actually, that's done with TPUs which are more efficient: https://cloud.google.com/tpu. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Nvidia CEO: Ethereum Is Going To Be Quite Valuable, Transactions Will Still Be A Lot Faster
    TPU training uses Google silicon and is thus a true deep learning alternative to Nvidia. Source: almost 4 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon Forecast and Google Cloud TPU, you can also consider the following products

Scikit-learn - scikit-learn (formerly scikits.learn) is an open source machine learning library for the Python programming language.

machine-learning in Python - Do you want to do machine learning using Python, but you’re having trouble getting started? In this post, you will complete your first machine learning project using Python.

python-recsys - python-recsys is a python library for implementing a recommender system.

AWS Personalize - Real-time personalization and recommendation engine in AWS

GoLearn - GoLearn is a machine learning library for Go that implements the scikit-learn interface of Fit/Predict.

Qubole - Qubole delivers a self-service platform for big aata analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft and Google Clouds.