Ownership vs Rental: An Interactive Cost Model
Companion to Ireland's AI Research Gap by Conor Igoe.
This model estimates the annualised cost per GPU-hour of owning and operating a national AI GPU cluster in Ireland. Hardware is amortised over a 5-year replacement cycle. Facility construction and land are amortised over 20 years. It compares this against reserved commercial cloud rental (e.g. AWS, CoreWeave, Lambda). Ireland's current interim arrangement — renting time on Luxembourg's MeluXina through ICHEC — may have different pricing, but the contract terms are not public; commercial cloud provides a transparent benchmark.
Key Parameters
Assumptions
Defaults are calibrated to Irish parameters. Hover any row for an explanation. Click values to edit.
The Math
Every step from inputs to cost-per-GPU-hour. Hover any value for an explanation.