# How it works

## Renting Compute on w\.ai

Renting compute on w\.ai provides a dedicated Jupyter Notebook or SSH environment backed by real GPU hardware from our distributed compute network. You gain full access to a sandboxed container, choosing between CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs, ROCm for AMD GPUs, or MLX for Apple Silicon, billed by the minute using w\.ai points.

***

### Step-by-Step Guide

#### Browse Available GPUs

Visit the **Compute** page at <https://app.w.ai/compute> to see live GPU inventory. Each card displays:

* **GPU Model** — e.g., NVIDIA RTX 5090, Apple M4 Pro
* **VRAM** — Total GPU memory available
* **Backend** — CUDA, ROCm, Metal, or Vulkan
* **Price** — Cost in w\.ai points per hour
* **Availability** — Number of workers offering this hardware

Use the search bar and category filters (NVIDIA, Apple, AMD, Intel) to find the right GPU for your workload.

#### Select Duration & Rent

Choose your rental duration from available options:

| Duration     | Use Case                            |
| ------------ | ----------------------------------- |
| 5–30 minutes | Quick experiments, testing code     |
| 1 hour       | Standard development sessions       |
| 2 hours      | Training runs, larger experiments   |
| 4–12 hours   | Extended compute jobs               |
| 24 hours     | Long-running training or processing |

The UI shows your **total cost** before confirmation. Ensure you have sufficient w\.ai points to cover the duration. Click **Rent** to confirm.

#### Wait for Provisioning

Upon confirmation, your rental enters a **Pending** state as:

1. The network matches a worker with your requested hardware.
2. The worker provisions an isolated container environment.
3. The Jupyter Notebook and SSH server starts and becomes accessible, typically taking under \~1 minute.

#### Access Your Jupyter Notebook or SSH terminal

Once active, your rental card shows:

* **Session URL** — Your unique Jupyter Notebook endpoint
* **Access Token** — Authentication token
* **Time Remaining** — Live countdown

For SSH, you will see your SSH credentials (username, host, etc.)

Click **Details** on My Rentals for full access credentials, then **Open Jupyter Notebook** or Open Web Terminal to launch your environment in a new tab.

***

### Your Environment

Each rental provides a fully configured Jupyter Notebook or SSH environment with Python 3.11, pip, and a comprehensive set of pre-installed packages.

> **Note:** The environment is ephemeral. All files are deleted when the session ends. Download any results before your rental expires.

#### Pre-Installed Python Packages

**Linux / Windows (CUDA & ROCm)**

| Category               | Packages                                                                     |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Notebooks**          | JupyterLab, ipywidgets, tqdm                                                 |
| **Data Science**       | NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, scikit-learn                                           |
| **Visualization**      | Matplotlib, Seaborn, Pillow                                                  |
| **ML / Deep Learning** | PyTorch (CUDA/ROCm/CPU), TorchVision, TorchAudio, MLX-CUDA, Unsloth          |
| **Hugging Face**       | Transformers, Datasets, Hugging Face Hub, Accelerate, Diffusers, Safetensors |

**macOS (Apple Silicon)**

| Category               | Packages                                          |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| **Notebooks**          | JupyterLab, ipywidgets                            |
| **Data Science**       | NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, scikit-learn                |
| **Visualization**      | Matplotlib                                        |
| **ML / Deep Learning** | PyTorch (MPS), TorchVision                        |
| **Hugging Face**       | Transformers, Diffusers, Accelerate, Safetensors  |
| **Apple MLX**          | MLX, mlx-lm, mlx-vlm, mlx-audio, mlx-video, MFlux |

#### Base Container Images

Each environment is built on a minimal, production-grade base image depending on the backend:

| Backend           | Base Image                                                                                                                                                                                |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **CUDA (NVIDIA)** | [nvidia/cuda:12.1.1-devel-ubuntu22.04](https://hub.docker.com/layers/nvidia/cuda/12.1.1-devel-ubuntu22.04/images/sha256-327c9e046fbf662275be0934742f7e5412f9b24402ee90bf4d649c1a21707912) |
| **ROCm (AMD)**    | [rocm/dev-ubuntu-22.04:7.1.1](https://hub.docker.com/layers/rocm/dev-ubuntu-22.04/7.1.1/images/sha256-2d390c574e5e7e49e40e3bb376a88608c750d3f6c64b29d6adbc5834bee6c9be)                   |
| **Vulkan**        | [ubuntu:22.04](https://hub.docker.com/layers/library/ubuntu/22.04/images/sha256-965fbcae990b0467ed5657caceaec165018ef44a4d2d46c7cdea80a9dff0d1ea?context=explore)                         |

All images also include: `curl`, `git`, `ca-certificates`, `glib`, **Python 3.11.14**, and **uv** (fast Python package installer).

> **Need an additional system package?** [Contact us](https://w.ai/support) to request additions to the base image.

***

### Managing Your Rentals

Visit **My Rentals** in the sidebar to manage all sessions.

#### Extending a Session

Need more time? Click **Extend** to add minutes or hours. Extensions charge the same per-minute rate and require a sufficient point balance.

#### Stopping Early

Click **Stop Rental** to end a session early. Billing is **pro-rated by the minute** — you are charged only for the minutes used and remaining reserved points are refunded.

***

### Pricing

Rental pricing depends on:

* **GPU Performance** — Higher-tier GPUs cost more points per hour
* **VRAM** — More memory increases the base price
* **Network Earnings** — Prices reflect actual GPU earning rates on the network

A minimum charge of **1 point per minute** applies to all sessions. Pro-rated billing refunds unused reserved points if a session ends early. Prices are displayed on each GPU card in the Compute marketplace.

***

### Networking Restrictions

For security, outbound network access from rental environments is restricted to an allowlist of trusted domains required for ML development:

| Category                       | Domain                         |
| ------------------------------ | ------------------------------ |
| **Package Registries**         | `pypi.org`                     |
|                                | `files.pythonhosted.org`       |
| **ML / Dataset Platforms**     | `huggingface.co`               |
|                                | `hf.co`                        |
|                                | `kaggle.com`                   |
|                                | `openml.org`                   |
|                                | `archive.ics.uci.edu`          |
| **ML Frameworks**              | `download.pytorch.org`         |
|                                | `tensorflow.org`               |
| **Research Data Repositories** | `zenodo.org`                   |
|                                | `figshare.com`                 |
|                                | `osf.io`                       |
|                                | `dataverse.harvard.edu`        |
|                                | `datadryad.org`                |
|                                | `archive.org`                  |
| **Source Code Hosting**        | `github.com`                   |
|                                | `githubusercontent.com`        |
|                                | `gitlab.com`                   |
|                                | `bitbucket.org`                |
|                                | `sourceforge.net`              |
| **Cloud / CDN Storage**        | `dl.fbaipublicfiles.com`       |
|                                | `storage.googleapis.com`       |
|                                | `storage.cloud.google.com`     |
|                                | `s3.amazonaws.com`             |
|                                | `blob.core.windows.net`        |
|                                | `cloudfront.net`               |
|                                | `r2.cloudflarestorage.com`     |
|                                | `download.microsoft.com`       |
| **File Sharing Services**      | `drive.google.com`             |
|                                | `drive.usercontent.google.com` |
|                                | `dropbox.com`                  |
|                                | `dl.dropboxusercontent.com`    |
| **Government / Research Labs** | `nersc.gov`                    |
|                                | `nasa.gov`                     |
|                                | `cern.ch`                      |
|                                | `noaa.gov`                     |
|                                | `nist.gov`                     |
| **Web-Scale Datasets**         | `commoncrawl.org`              |
|                                | `dumps.wikimedia.org`          |
| **Computer Vision Datasets**   | `image-net.org`                |
|                                | `cocodataset.org`              |
|                                | `cs.toronto.edu`               |
| **Biomedical Data**            | `ncbi.nlm.nih.gov`             |
|                                | `ebi.ac.uk`                    |
|                                | `physionet.org`                |
| **Speech / Audio Data**        | `openslr.org`                  |

**All other outbound network traffic is strictly blocked.** This includes general web browsing, SSH connections, and access to arbitrary external services.

> **Need access to an additional domain?** Contact us on Discord to request additions to the network allowlist.

***

### Security

w\.ai compute sessions are designed with defense-in-depth isolation to protect both renters and workers.

#### Linux / Windows

* All Linux capabilities dropped — containers run with the minimal possible privilege set
* **Non-root user** — system package installation is disabled inside the container
* **Network isolation** — outbound traffic restricted to the allowlist above; all other traffic denied
* **Resource limits** — CPU, memory, and ulimits are enforced to prevent resource abuse
* Container filesystem is ephemeral and fully destroyed on session termination

#### macOS (Apple Silicon)

* **Network isolation** — very limited networking restricted to the allowlist above
* **Locked-down sandbox** — all system access is blocked outside the sandbox directory
* **Restricted shell** — only a very limited set of shell commands are enabled; all others are blocked
* **Minimal kernel access** — only essential kernel services are available to the sandbox environment

***

### Worker Requirements

To contribute your machine as a compute rental worker, you must meet these minimum requirements:

#### All Platforms

* **20 GB available storage** — required for container images, models, and session data

#### Linux

* System packages: `uidmap`, `iptables`
* NVIDIA GPUs additionally require: `nvidia-container-toolkit`

#### Windows

* NVIDIA GPU required
* WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) must be installed
  * The w\.ai worker will attempt to install WSL automatically if missing — a system reboot is required to complete setup

#### macOS

* Apple Silicon (M1 or later) required
* No additional system packages needed

#### Running the Worker

Start the worker in the foreground:

```bash
wai run w.ai
```

Or run in the background (detached mode):

```bash
wai run w.ai -d
```

Manage background workers with:

```bash
wai list              # List running instances
wai logs -f           # Follow live logs
wai stop <name>       # Stop a worker (or "wai stop all")
wai restart <name>    # Restart a worker
```

Workers earn **w\.ai points** for every minute a rental session is active on their hardware.