Compare Amazon Elastic Inference vs. NVIDIA Triton Inference Server

Amazon Elastic Inference provides an affordable way to enhance Amazon EC2 and Sagemaker instances or Amazon ECS tasks with GPU-powered acceleration, potentially cutting deep learning inference costs by as much as 75%. It is compatible with models built on TensorFlow, Apache MXNet, PyTorch, and ONNX. The term "inference" refers to the act of generating predictions from a trained model. In the realm of deep learning, inference can represent up to 90% of the total operational expenses, primarily for two reasons. Firstly, GPU instances are generally optimized for model training rather than inference, as training tasks can handle numerous data samples simultaneously, while inference typically involves processing one input at a time in real-time, resulting in minimal GPU usage. Consequently, relying solely on GPU instances for inference can lead to higher costs. Conversely, CPU instances lack the necessary specialization for matrix computations, making them inefficient and often too sluggish for deep learning inference tasks. This necessitates a solution like Elastic Inference, which optimally balances cost and performance in inference scenarios.

The NVIDIA Triton™ inference server provides efficient and scalable AI solutions for production environments. This open-source software simplifies the process of AI inference, allowing teams to deploy trained models from various frameworks, such as TensorFlow, NVIDIA TensorRT®, PyTorch, ONNX, XGBoost, Python, and more, across any infrastructure that relies on GPUs or CPUs, whether in the cloud, data center, or at the edge. By enabling concurrent model execution on GPUs, Triton enhances throughput and resource utilization, while also supporting inferencing on both x86 and ARM architectures. It comes equipped with advanced features such as dynamic batching, model analysis, ensemble modeling, and audio streaming capabilities. Additionally, Triton is designed to integrate seamlessly with Kubernetes, facilitating orchestration and scaling, while providing Prometheus metrics for effective monitoring and supporting live updates to models. This software is compatible with all major public cloud machine learning platforms and managed Kubernetes services, making it an essential tool for standardizing model deployment in production settings. Ultimately, Triton empowers developers to achieve high-performance inference while simplifying the overall deployment process.