Oh I'm funded. Definitely was told not to go unless I'm fully funded. But $500k for computing resources is bigger than a lot of small term contracts (I'm mostly on research and usually don't have to TA unless there's a hiccup in funding schedules. Gov money...). I definitely see that amount for long term, but this seems like a pretty short project.
Got it. (1) Yes, 500k is a lot, but (2) the TFRC program is making fairly expensive TPUs available at shockingly good prices for researchers willing to do some tire-kicking and feedback-providing. So 500k of TPU time is easier to come by than, say, 500k of generic compute.
