What Europe means on a GPU cloud: EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland

The EU is its member states. The EEA is the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The United Kingdom is outside both. So is Switzerland. A provider can label a site in any of them as Europe.

For network distance the four are neighbours. For a contract that says data stays in the EU, they are not the same thing at all.

The GDPR applies across the EEA. The United Kingdom and Switzerland have their own data protection laws. Moving personal data between these areas is common and lawful under the right conditions, but it is a transfer, and your own contracts may name one area only.

If a customer agreement says EU, a machine in Norway, London or Zurich needs a second look before you use it.

Providers name regions in their own ways. One writes a city. One writes a compass point and a number, such as a western or northern Europe label. One writes only Europe.

Ask what the name maps to: a country, a city or one facility with an address. Write the country in your brief, not the label.

A provider with sites in several European countries does not offer every GPU in each. The newest cards reach a few sites first. So the question is where this card is, on this date.

Stock and quotas are local as well. A card free in one country can be gone in the next.

For each option write the GPU, the country, the city if stated, whether it started and the date. If your rules name the EU or the EEA, add which of the four areas the country is in.

That line removes most options before you read a single price, which is the point of asking it first.

Runcrate’s live feed lists the places each GPU model is offered. The feed gives one price per GPU, not one per place. Confirm the region on runcrate.ai on the day you start. Runcrate’s feed lists GPUs in Europe in Dublin, Worcester, Frankfurt, Paris, Helsinki, Gdańsk, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Italy.

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