Nvidia announces the Tesla V100, the first Volta GPU

Today Nvidia kicked off the GPU Technology Conference, with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang taking the stage to announce its very first GPU based on the Volta architecture- the Tesla V100. This is the most advanced accelerator ever built, powered by 5120 CUDA cores, over 21 billion transistors and 16GB of HBM2 running at 900 GB/s.

The GV100 includes 21.1 billion transistors in total with a die size of 815 mm2. It is fabricated on a new TSMC 12nm FFN high performance manufacturing process. In all, it is a considerable jump in compute performance compared to the Pascal GP100.

To improve FP31 and FP64 performance, Nvidia has equipped the GV100 with a new SM Processor architecture. The new Volta SM is 50 percent more energy efficient than the Pascal design. On top of that, Volta is equipped with new ‘Tensor Cores', which are designed specifically to deliver up to 12 times higher TFLOPs for Deep Learning applications.

When it comes to memory, Nvidia has opted to go with Samsung's HBM2 modules, combined with a next generation memory controller in Volta. This combination provides 1.5 times more memory bandwidth when compared to the GP100. Volta's HBM2 implementation is also said to be around 95 percent more efficient when running under certain workloads.

Here are the peak computation units for the Tesla V100:

• 7.5 TFLOP/s of double precision floating-point (FP64) performance;
• 15 TFLOP/s of single precision (FP32) performance;
• 120 Tensor TFLOP/s of mixed-precision matrix-multiply-and-accumulate.

And finally, here is a table going over the full V100 spec compared to the last few generations of Tesla flagships.

Tesla Product	Tesla K40	Tesla M40	Tesla P100	Tesla V100
GPU	GK110 (Kepler)	GM200 (Maxwell)	GP100 (Pascal)	GV100 (Volta)
SMs	15	24	56	80
TPCs	15	24	28	40
FP32 Cores / SM	192	128	64	64
FP32 Cores / GPU	2880	3072	3584	5120
FP64 Cores / SM	64	4	32	32
FP64 Cores / GPU	960	96	1792	2560
Tensor Cores / SM	NA	NA	NA	8
Tensor Cores / GPU	NA	NA	NA	640
GPU Boost Clock	810/875 MHz	1114 MHz	1480 MHz	1455 MHz
Peak FP32 TFLOP/s*	5.04	6.8	10.6	15
Peak FP64 TFLOP/s*	1.68	2.1	5.3	7.5
Peak Tensor Core TFLOP/s*	NA	NA	NA	120
Texture Units	240	192	224	320
Memory Interface	384-bit GDDR5	384-bit GDDR5	4096-bit HBM2	4096-bit HBM2
Memory Size	Up to 12 GB	Up to 24 GB	16 GB	16 GB
L2 Cache Size	1536 KB	3072 KB	4096 KB	6144 KB
Shared Memory Size / SM	16 KB/32 KB/48 KB	96 KB	64 KB	Configurable up to 96 KB
Register File Size / SM	256 KB	256 KB	256 KB	256KB
Register File Size / GPU	3840 KB	6144 KB	14336 KB	20480 KB
TDP	235 Watts	250 Watts	300 Watts	300 Watts
Transistors	7.1 billion	8 billion	15.3 billion	21.1 billion
GPU Die Size	551 mm²	601 mm²	610 mm²	815 mm²
Manufacturing Process	28 nm	28 nm	16 nm FinFET+	12 nm FFN

KitGuru Says: Volta is officially here and it seems that Nvidia has made some interesting advancements with this new architecture. This is an interesting first look at what's to come later down the line too, though there will be some differences when Volta comes to the GeForce line, including a change from HBM2 to GDDR6 memory. 

 

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