The best hardware to choose for your models is a cluster with 2 a2-megagpu-16g machines, each with 16 NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs (640 GB GPU memory in total), 96 vCPUs, and 1.4 TB RAM. This hardware configuration can provide you with enough compute power, memory, and bandwidth to handle your large and complex deep learning models, as well as your custom TensorFlow ops in C++. The NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs are the latest and most advanced GPUs from NVIDIA, which offer high performance, scalability, and efficiency for various ML workloads. They also support multi-instance GPU (MIG) technology, which allows you to partition each GPU into up to seven smaller instances, each with its own memory, cache, and compute cores. This can enable you to run multiple experiments in parallel, or to optimize the resource utilization and cost efficiency of your models. The a2-megagpu-16g machines are part of the Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family, which are designed to provide the best performance and flexibility for GPU-intensive applications. They also offer high-speed NVLink interconnects between the GPUs, which can improve the data transfer and communication between the GPUs. Moreover, the a2-megagpu-16g machines have 96 vCPUs and 1.4 TB RAM, which can support the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

The other options are not optimal for the following reasons:

A. A cluster with 2 n1-highcpu-64 machines, each with 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs (128 GB GPU memory in total), and a n1-highcpu-64 machine with 64 vCPUs and 58 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs are the previous generation of GPUs from NVIDIA, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs. They also do not support the MIG technology, which can limit the flexibility and optimization of your models. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

C. A cluster with an n1-highcpu-64 machine with a v2-8 TPU and 64 GB RAM is not a good option, as it has less GPU memory, compute power, and bandwidth than the a2-megagpu-16g machines. The v2-8 TPU is a cloud tensor processing unit (TPU) device, which is a custom ASIC chip designed by Google to accelerate ML workloads. However, the v2-8 TPU is the second generation of TPUs, which have lower performance, scalability, and efficiency than the latest v3-8 TPUs. They also have less memory and bandwidth than the NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPUs, which can limit the size and complexity of your models, as well as the data transfer and communication between the devices. Moreover, the n1-highcpu-64 machine has lower vCPUs and RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the CPU and memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

D. A cluster with 4 n1-highcpu-96 machines, each with 96 vCPUs and 86 GB RAM is not a good option, as it does not have any GPUs, which are essential for accelerating deep learning models. The n1-highcpu-96 machines are part of the Google Cloud N1 VM family, which are general-purpose VMs that do not offer the best performance and features for GPU-intensive applications. They also have lower RAM than the a2-megagpu-16g machines, which can affect the memory requirements of your models, as well as the data preprocessing and postprocessing tasks.

References:

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Google Cloud launches machine learning engineer certification

NVIDIA Tesla A100 GPU

Google Cloud Accelerator-Optimized VM (A2) family

Google Cloud N1 VM family

Cloud TPU