Google Colab
Google Colab is a cloud-based Jupyter Notebook service that offers free access to GPUs and TPUs for machine learning and data analysis. It supports Python and integrates with Google Drive for easy collaboration. Colab provides a lightweight alternative to local notebook environments.
About
Google Colab (Colaboratory) is a free, cloud-hosted Jupyter notebook environment that runs in the browser and provides access to Python runtimes with optional GPU and TPU acceleration. Users can write and execute code, visualize data, install packages, and collaborate by sharing notebook links, all without needing to manage local environments. Colab integrates tightly with Google Drive, making it easy to store, version, and share notebooks and data files.
For teaching, workshops, and quick prototyping, Colab offers a low-friction way to introduce users to Python, data analysis, and machine learning. It can be used alongside campus HPC resources—for example, to teach basic concepts, prepare code, or perform smaller experiments—before moving heavier workloads to clusters. With support for libraries like NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch, and TensorFlow, Colab is well-suited for examples, tutorials, and exploratory research that benefit from an interactive, browser-based environment.
Google Colab Pro, which offers 100 compute units per month, faster GPUs, and more memory, is offered at no cost for students and educators.
Loading data: Drive, Sheets, and Google Cloud Storage
Example: Retraining an Image Classifier
Build a Keras model on top of a pre-trained image classifier to distinguish flowers.
Example: Text Classification
Classify IMDB movie reviews as either positive or negative.