I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this card. With a 1/32 Double Precision ratio and a core count not seen so small in accelerators since Maxwell - what niche is this filling? As a T4 successor it falls a bit short in comparison. Less memory bandwidth. Fewer cores. Less compute capability. Just...why?
As they say, its niche is inference. For that, you mostly need int8 and BF16.
Compared to their other Tesla products, what it gives you is a GPU that can run with no aux power and has the same CUDA capability as the rest of their Ampere line. That includes tensor cores with BF16, which I think T4 is lacking.
Replacement for the low end Quadro line, often used in workstation grade office boxes that don't need much GPU power, but need something with certified drivers (Intel support is garbage).
Scratch that, I didn't see that this line doesn't have the display outputs. Stupid NVIDIA claiming that Quadro will be replaced by the A model line and then mixing it up with stuff like this.
nvidia maintain multiple product lines and now uses the same generational letter to indicate what is behind. This is a Tesla (compute card) A2, not the same as a Quadro (workstation).
NVIDIA posted a couple of benchmarks where this card is 20 or 30% faster than the T4 while having a lower TDP. The A2 is also likely less expensive to produce as the T4 is built on a big die - a cut down TU104 GPU (same number of CUDA cores as a 2070 SUPER) - and has a 256 bit VRAM bus compared with the 128 bit bus on the A2. Also, since they aren't producing so many non cut down TU104s these days they possibly need some sort of replacement.
Servers get slot-powered low-end cards before consumers do. Makes sense from a profit perspective, sucks from the perspective of wanting a basic low-powered card that isn't 4.5 years old.
What about as a dedicated GPU to a single VM running RDP services in a low power. low space server like https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/IoT/... . Should be able to improve the user experiences with graphical applications.
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sabot00 - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Can this play games if one virtualizes the card (to get around no display out).RU482 - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
I doubt you'd be blown away by the performance if it couldmode_13h - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Yes, quite likely. Given that it's based on a GA107, performance would be similar to a RTX 3050.Spunjji - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
About 2/3 of an RTX 3050 when you balance out the clock speed and core count differences.catavalon21 - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this card. With a 1/32 Double Precision ratio and a core count not seen so small in accelerators since Maxwell - what niche is this filling? As a T4 successor it falls a bit short in comparison. Less memory bandwidth. Fewer cores. Less compute capability. Just...why?mode_13h - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
As they say, its niche is inference. For that, you mostly need int8 and BF16.Compared to their other Tesla products, what it gives you is a GPU that can run with no aux power and has the same CUDA capability as the rest of their Ampere line. That includes tensor cores with BF16, which I think T4 is lacking.
mode_13h - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
> Less compute capability.Uh, those words have a very specific meaning, in Nvidia/CUDA context. What I think you mean is less compute capacity or performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA#Version_feature...
catavalon21 - Thursday, November 11, 2021 - link
point takenGigaplex - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Replacement for the low end Quadro line, often used in workstation grade office boxes that don't need much GPU power, but need something with certified drivers (Intel support is garbage).Gigaplex - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Scratch that, I didn't see that this line doesn't have the display outputs. Stupid NVIDIA claiming that Quadro will be replaced by the A model line and then mixing it up with stuff like this.frenchy_2001 - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
nvidia maintain multiple product lines and now uses the same generational letter to indicate what is behind. This is a Tesla (compute card) A2, not the same as a Quadro (workstation).Spunjji - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
But Tesla and Quadro went away - that's the point. It's not clear why they got rid of the names.Yojimbo - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
NVIDIA posted a couple of benchmarks where this card is 20 or 30% faster than the T4 while having a lower TDP. The A2 is also likely less expensive to produce as the T4 is built on a big die - a cut down TU104 GPU (same number of CUDA cores as a 2070 SUPER) - and has a 256 bit VRAM bus compared with the 128 bit bus on the A2. Also, since they aren't producing so many non cut down TU104s these days they possibly need some sort of replacement.Spunjji - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
Servers get slot-powered low-end cards before consumers do. Makes sense from a profit perspective, sucks from the perspective of wanting a basic low-powered card that isn't 4.5 years old.mode_13h - Thursday, November 11, 2021 - link
Is the RTX 3050 not shipping yet? I haven't really been paying attention.Robert Emard - Friday, November 12, 2021 - link
What about as a dedicated GPU to a single VM running RDP services in a low power. low space server like https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/IoT/... . Should be able to improve the user experiences with graphical applications.