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Yep, I figured it out. I suppose your images are made of large dataset to crunch, for the most part and a smallish part with the R/python/whatever code do execute.

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The data is not part of the images. It's only the software. In the vast majority of cases, any particular data processing job requires only a tiny fraction of the available software. For instance, a few hundred MB out of a few tens of GB for a typical LHC application software release.

In practice that sounds like an excellent optimization, but in theory it annoys me that we're doing that rather than figuring out how to build better binaries.

I work on a platform that handles fleets of edge devices running a linux-based OS, where applications are distributed as container images. Nvidia in particular are rather awful to support, as any users with their hardware inevitably build 10+ GB images, largely composed of libraries and samples they'll never use. Plenty of other users are unaware that they can improve the speed and reliability of their deployments by trimming the fat from their images.

A lot of work goes into properly handling and optimizing the download and distribution of excessively large application images, often on slow and unreliable networks, when smaller is always faster and more reliable.

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