Just signed up and ported my model + data: - it's indeed noticeably faster than the Google VMs. As usual, I compiled tensorflow for this GPU vs K80 (feature 6.1 vs 3.7). - ubuntu 16 minimal is indeed "minimal" ! but it worked... - GTX 1080 (7.92GB) has less GPU RAM than the K80 (11.17GiB) - this required me to reduce the model design slightly.

For my model/data, Hetzner runs 1 training epoch in 1 hr vs 1.75 hr for Google. I'm moving the rest of my work over tomorrow. When Google has TPUs available, I'll look at it again.

thanks!! for the tip.