NVIDIA’s Volta architecture – the next step in GPUs
Updated 23/10/2017
In recent months we’ve readied a number of our machines to deliver an exceptional graphics experience. Much of this has been made possible by NVIDIA’s GTX 10xx-series graphics cards, which we have already implemented into several of our popular units to satisfy a wide variety of different applications.
Most notably, we’re in the process of building our very first 4U Rack PC – the 4U Nano. This powerful yet compact machine is the only one of our current product line-up able to accommodate multiple high-end graphics cards, such as the GTX 1080 Ti and M6000, which is why we’ve got our eye on NVIDIA’s latest innovation.
Introducing Volta
NVIDIA has taken its GPUs to the next level with an entirely new architecture called Volta. Volta has been purpose-built for artificial intelligence, recognising the monumental influence the technology is beginning to have in a number of industries and its ability to solve problems previously thought unsolvable.
Born from Volta is their most powerful GPU to date, the ground-breaking Tesla V100. Just one of these GPUs delivers comparable performance to 100 CPUs, making it an ideal match for High Performance Computing (HPC) and heavy compute workloads. Its main function, though, seems to be rooted in deep learning, a branch of AI that ‘learns’ about data in order to make sense of it. As well as massive leaps forward in bandwidth since their earlier Tesla P100, the V100 GPU offers 12x more deep learning training performance than its predecessor.
On top of that, it boasts some incredible specs:
- 640 Tensor cores
- 12nm process
- 21bn transistors
- 900 GB/sec
While the Tesla V100 is a GPU exclusive to the data centre, we cannot wait to see what the rest of the Volta architecture will yield. It’s unlikely that we’ll get to enjoy the benefits of this exciting new processor family until 2018, but in the meantime, we may have a new GeForce GPU to look forward to, in the GTX 1070 Ti.
We’re intrigued by what Volta could mean for our products, and will continue to do our research to ensure we’re pairing our customers with the best graphics technology on the market.
If you would like to learn more about the new Volta architecture, or else discover how we’ve applied NVIDIA’s graphics cards to our machines, please get in touch.
