Nvidia unveils Ampere card A100 in PCI Express format

Almost two years ago, Nvidia unveiled the first consumer cards with the then fresh architecture Turing, but before the year 2020 comes to an end, the successor Ampere will be on the market. Recently, the graphics giant unveiled the first hardware with that brand new architecture in the form of data center-adapted A100, which also offers news such as manufacturing of 7 nanometers and 40 GB HBM2 memory.

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However, the presented product is adapted for the SXM4 interface, which requires a tailored system. For those looking for a more versatile format, Nvidia now presents the A100 in the form of a plug-in card. Connection is made via PCI Express 4.0 and thus marks the company’s arrival in the faster protocol, something that could possibly spill over to the consumer side.

Because the graphics circuit is unchanged, many details are identical to the month-old sibling, where 6,912 CUDA cores fit in the solid circuit with an area of 826 mm². TSMC is responsible for manufacturing with 7-nanometer technology, and next to the graphics processor is 40 GB HBM2 memory signed Samsung with a total bandwidth of 1.6 TB / s. The SXM4 variant has a large TDP value of 400 watts, while the plug-in card stays at 250 watts and therefore follows a certain decrease in performance.

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Nvidia states that this is about 10 percent lower performance, but in applications that benefit from many interconnected graphics processors, the performance reduction is greater. Connection between PCI Express-based A100 is made via the NVLink interface, which stops two graphics cards. In the custom SXM4-equipped systems, NVSwitch is used instead to increase the number to eight.

The A100 in the new format occupies two expansion slots and is delivered with a solid and gold-colored heat sink without a visible fan, and the external power supply is revealed neither in specifications nor in the image material. The price tag is also shrouded in obscurity, but considering that the DGX A100 system costs SEK 2.5 million including VAT, the price tag on the stand-alone card can also be assumed to be of the heavier kind.