Google has launched a new Google Colab extension for Visual Studio Code. Colab is Google's platform for AI/ML development. 

Colab can be used to write and execute code, collaborate with others, and access computing resources like GPUs and TPUs.

Until now, Colab has been an online cloud-based IDE for Python that has become populat with students and researchers due to it being free and easy to use. 

Colab provides hosted Jupyter notebooks. It prioritizes users who are actively programming in a notebook to provide maximum access to the underlying resources. Google says that the resources are not guaranteed and not unlimited, and usage limits sometimes fluctuate. Some activities are prohibited, such as file hosting, media serving, or other web service offerings not related to interactive compute with Colab.

Google recently announced that the google.colab.ai Python library is now available to all Colab users, including free tier users. google-colab-ai makes it easy to access state-of-the-art Gemini and Gemma models in Colab environments. Google also added a new AI Prompt Cell for a more intuitive no/low code AI workflow.

Google says the new Colab VS Code extension combines the strengths of both platforms. VS Code users can continue to use the editor they're familiar with, and can connect local notebooks to high-powered Colab runtimes, including Pro-tier runtimes with premium GPUs and TPUs.

Colab users get a more powerful IDE to use, which Google says could be especially useful to support the workflows in notebooks that are part of a larger project or Git repository. They say this extension bridges the gap between simple to provision Colab runtimes and the prolific VS Code editor.

The extension can be installed like any other in VS Code from the Extensions view from the Activity Bar. 

Once installed, users can create or open any .ipynb notebook file in their local workspace, then either run a cell (which drops you into kernel selection) or click the Select Kernel button in the top right. Once Colab is selected and the user is signed in, the local notebook will be powered by a Colab runtime. For VS Code derivatives the extension is also published to Open VSX.

Google says it plans "to bring even more Colab goodness to VS Code". Colab for Visual Studio Code is available on the VS Code Marketplace now. 

More Information

Colab Extension On The VS Code Marketplace

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