# Google Colab

**Colab** is an online **programming environment** for Python including a free runtime with a GPU and is the standard programming environment for our machine learning projects.

There are several other alternatives provding a free GPU in the cloud, however, Cola from Google is the most widely used. The restriction of Google Colab and those of other current providers are given here (status from Augut 2021):

{% embed url="<https://towardsdatascience.com/free-gpus-for-training-your-deep-learning-models-c1ce47863350>" %}

The following blog article provides you with a great written introduction to Google Colab:

{% embed url="<https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/google-colab-101-tutorial-with-python-tips-tricks-and-faq-7689bd4d24b4>" %}

If you want to get a little bit deeper into using Colab, make sure to also read this blog article:

{% embed url="<https://medium.com/@robertbracco1/configuring-google-colab-like-a-pro-d61c253f7573>" %}

This video on YouTube is also a very good introduction on Colab:

{% embed url="<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVe648dJOdI>" %}