Compatibility
Learn about Thunder Compute’s technical specs, supported AI/ML libraries (PyTorch, Hugging Face), limitations, and strengths
Use cases
Thunder Compute is optimized for AI/ML development workflows. That said, Thunder Compute has the full functionality of an EC2-style on-demand GPU cloud instance.
CUDA versioning
- CUDA version 12.1 or greater
- CUDNN version 9.0 or greater
Do not attempt to reinstall CUDA. If it seems like you need an older CUDA driver, you almost always are better off upgrading your other dependencies (e.g., PyTorch)
Officially supported libraries
The following libraries and tools are thoroughly tested:
- PyTorch
- Notebooks
- AI model serving tools like ComfyUI, Ollama, VLLM, Unsloth, and more
Note: make sure you install the cuda-compatible version of these libraries. The cuda-compatible PyTorch binary and latest CUDA drivers are pre-installed on every Thunder Compute instance.
Pre-installed libraries
- CUDA toolkit
- Docker (see Docker on Thunder Compute)
- PyTorch (and derivatives), Numpy, Pandas
- Jupyterlab
Technical specs
- Egress/Ingress: 7Gbps
- IP: dynamic
- Region: U.S. Central (Iowa)
- E or N series CPU instances in GCP
Geographic availability
Thunder Compute is not currently available in the following countries:
- Kazakhstan
- Indonesia
- China
- Russia
- Iraq
- Yemen
- Kuwait
- Qatar
- Bangladesh
- Algeria
- Morocco
- Tunisia
- Jordan
- Iran
- Malaysia
- Japan
- Mexico
- Colombia
- Switzerland
- South Korea
If you’re located in one of these countries and need access to Thunder Compute, please contact us to discuss potential alternatives.
Experimental (less stable)
The following workloads are less tested, experimental, or unstable:
- Tensorflow [experimental]
- PyTorch Lightning [experimental]
- Jax [experimental]
- Custom CUDA Kernels [unpredictable behavior, particularly with errors and profiling. Message us for details]
Unsupported
Currently, Thunder Compute lacks official support for graphics workloads such as OpenGL, Vulkan, and FFMPEG. If you’d like to run these, contact us.
Cryptocurrency mining
Mining, staking, or otherwise interacting with cryptocurrency is strictly prohibited on Thunder Compute. If cryptocurrency-related activity is detected, the associated account is immediately banned from Thunder Compute and any billing credit is revoked. The account is then billed for the full amount of usage.
Miscellaneous tips
We use a new kind of virtualization to maximize GPU utilization, reducing your cost. To learn more about how this works, check out this blog post.
If you encounter any strange issues or errors, please check our troubleshooting guide or contact us.
Recommended Guides
To help you get started with Thunder Compute, we recommend checking out these guides:
- Running Jupyter Notebooks - Use Jupyter for interactive development
- Using Instance Templates - Get started quickly with pre-configured environments