Nvidia launches A800 series of computing cards: NVLink bandwidth is limited to 400GB/s, exclusively for the Chinese market
The A100 series of computing cards based on the Ampere architecture has been adopted by many high-performance computing clusters (HPC) over the past two years. These GPUs are heavily used for artificial intelligence and deep learning tasks. Even though NVIDIA launched a new generation of H100 series computing cards based on the Hopper architecture this year, for various reasons, the A100 series computing cards still have their own market in the data center and have been shipping.
According to Reuters, NVIDIA has launched the A800 series of computing cards exclusively for the Chinese market. Compared with the original A100 series computing cards, the specifications of the A800 series are basically the same. The big difference is the connection rate of the NVLink interconnect bus. The former is 600 GB/s, and the latter is limited to 400 GB/s. It is understood that Nvidia’s new products are designed to circumvent related export restrictions.
A800 series computing cards are divided into three versions and two different forms, SXM and PCIe. There are 40GB PCIe versions, 80GB PCIe version, and 80GB SXM versions respectively, but the computing performance of these computing cards FP64 and FP32 are the same, 9.7 TFLOPS and 19.5 TFLOPS respectively. The 40GB PCIe version is equipped with 40GB of HBM2 memory, with a bandwidth of 1555 GB/s and power consumption of 250W; the 80GB PCIe version is equipped with 80GB of HBM2e memory, with a bandwidth of 1935 GB/s and power consumption of 300W; the 80GB SXM version is equipped with 80GB of HBM2e memory, with a bandwidth of 2039 GB/s and power consumption of 400W.
Nvidia officials said in a statement that the A800 series computing cards have been put into production in the third quarter of 2022 and will be exported to the Chinese market as a replacement for the current A100 series computing cards. Nvidia has said it could lose about $400 million in a quarter due to export controls.
