Volta gets SUPER treatment + Passive 2080 ti

[williamcll]

At SC19 recently, Nvidia showcased some of their HPC products, aside from GPU support for Azure and ARM servers, the enterprise volta graphics card Tesla V100 also got a memory boost.

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NVIDIA Tesla are computing oriented devices equipped with graphics processors. What you won’t find on Tesla series are display connectors, as these cards cannot be used as daily desktop video cards – they are meant to be installed in clusters and supercomputers. Recently NVIDIA started to add more variants and call these cards ‘Tensor Core Processors’, as they not only offer CUDA cores but also Tensor cores.

 

The new Tesla V100s is a faster version of V100. It has a higher clock core frequency and also faster HBM2 memory. By default, the V100s has 32GB memory, which was only an option for the original V100 16GB. NVIDIA Tesla V100s still relies on Volta architecture with GV100 GPU and 5120 CUDA cores. That’s a 12nm GPU.This is, in fact, a sixth variant of the V100, as the original series was offered in two memory configurations: 16GB and 32GB. The series is also divided into PCIe and SMX2 versions. The series also has a FHHL variant (full height & half-length) with a TDP of 150W, but information on this SKU is limited.

 

There is no word on pricing, but it is expected to cost thousands of dollars (the V100 non-S currently retails at around 5850 USD).

Aside from that, the popular RTX 2080 Ti also gets a enterprise refit and its stovetop cooler is replaced with the same green passive cooler the Tesla P100 gets.

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One of the most interesting NVIDIA products we saw on the SC19 show floor was a green NVIDIA GPU. It turns out that it is a passively cooled NVIDIA PG150 GPU that is clearly meant for servers. This particular card stuck out on the SC19 show floor because it looked different than most of the others.

NVIDIA PG150 Passively Cooled GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

For some context, here are eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs from our Inspur Systems NF5468M5 Review:

8x NVIDIA Tesla V100 32GB Server

What you will notice here is that the NVIDIA Tesla V100’s have the newer gold coloring on the passive heatsink casing. This particular card we spotted looked more like the older Tesla P100’s that were shown in the Gigabyte W291-Z00 stock photo (note our Gigabyte W291-Z00 Review used 4x Tesla V100’s):

Gigabyte W291 Z00 With NVIDIA Tesla

At first, we thought this was not a big deal, but the single NVLink connector seemed out of place as it was the newer design with the older heatsink.

I took a photo of the identification bit of the card that was sitting on one of the show floor’s green NVIDIA display pedestals. The card’s heatsink did not say “P100” which every Tesla P100 I have seen clearly says. This seemed odd.

NVIDIA PG150 RTX 2080 Ti Passively Cooled GPU Close

After the show, I went to look up what this could be and the NVIDIA PG150 is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti board. When we cross-referenced that with our FE review which also was called a PG150 and that is the model for the FCC per the user guide.

It seems like there was a passively cooled NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti on display at SC19, sitting on one of the NVIDIA featured pedestals.

 

Source:https://videocardz.com/83372/nvidia-quietly-outs-tesla-v100s-with-higher-clocks
https://www.servethehome.com/nvidia-tesla-v100s-boasts-big-performance-gains-at-same-power/
https://www.servethehome.com/nvidia-pg150-passively-cooled-rtx-2080-ti-spotted-at-sc19/
Thoughts: It would be pretty cool to see a LTT $hit episode on a compute card since the last time we had one it was an intel and didn't have working drivers. I do wonder what kind of fan would be needed to drive a pair of passive 2080 Ti.

[Taf the Ghost]

Higher speed HBM2 and the half-step successor HBM2e are rolling out. Should start to see designs with both soon. Interesting the first we really see is an update to the Tesla V100. (This is the first card that's likely to be replaced by Nvidia, oddly enough, but not for a good few months still.)

[Bombastinator]

Term “passive cooling” confuses me.  Not sure what it’s referring to.  In my experience that means fins but no fans.  Fans elsewhere.

[Zando_]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Term “passive cooling” confuses me.  Not sure what it’s referring to.  In my experience that means fins but no fans.  Fans elsewhere.

Yeah, these cards don't have fans. They're meant to go in server racks which have really high airflow/static pressure fans that push air through everything. It's why they use passive CPU coolers too and the fins on mobo heatsinks and even the RAM slots are all lined up parallel so the air can push right through cleanly. 

[S w a t s o n]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeah, these cards don't have fans. They're meant to go in server racks which have really high airflow/static pressure fans that push air through everything. It's why they use passive CPU coolers too and the fins on mobo heatsinks and even the RAM slots are all lined up parallel so the air can push right through cleanly. 

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Term “passive cooling” confuses me.  Not sure what it’s referring to.  In my experience that means fins but no fans.  Fans elsewhere.

I just hate that they are called passive when it's really active cooling. These cards cant run with only passive heat dissipation but I guess no one wants a new word for heatsink that doesnt have a fan but requires a fan not attached to it to be blowing through it.

[Zando_]

Just now, S w a t s o n said:

I just hate that they are called passive when it's really active cooling. These cards cant run with only passive heat dissipation but I guess no one wants a new word for heatsink that doesnt have a fan but requires a fan not attached to it to be blowing through it.

True, but I guess from their perspective the card itself is passive. Similar to fanless PSUs, they still need airflow from an outside source, they just don't have one of their own. In that case it's for silence (relying on big slow quiet case fans), in servers I assume it's for maintenance (all the fans in the same spot in a neat row). 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

6 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

I just hate that they are called passive when it's really active cooling. These cards cant run with only passive heat dissipation but I guess no one wants a new word for heatsink that doesnt have a fan but requires a fan not attached to it to be blowing through it.

I made that mistake with a Tesla once (even though it did have a case fan right behind it). It went more or less like your profile picture

[AkatsukiKun]

Yeah everyone knows almost all server parts are passive because you have 10k-30k jet engine delta fans in the rack.

Hello?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Even passive consumer hardware isn't completely passive if it's in a case, because you still need fans to circulate the air.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Even passive consumer hardware isn't completely passive if it's in a case, because you still need fans to circulate the air.

Or water, in the case of loops so big that there doesn’t need to be fans.

[Bcat00]

That case reminds me of my old dell computer that sounds like a jet engine. It was very tightly designed leaving no spare room for air to go anywhere else aside from the directed GPU and CPU

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

That case reminds me of my old dell computer that sounds like a jet engine. It was very tightly designed leaving no spare room for air to go anywhere else aside from the directed GPU and CPU

From the sound of things it’s all server room stuff so yeah.  Jet engine.

[bcredeur97]

3 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeah, these cards don't have fans. They're meant to go in server racks which have really high airflow/static pressure fans that push air through everything. It's why they use passive CPU coolers too and the fins on mobo heatsinks and even the RAM slots are all lined up parallel so the air can push right through cleanly. 

yeah I was gonna say this. No way these things are passive. air (likely from very loud fans (e.g. delta)) is just channeled through the fins.

[NumLock21]

But the way how the fan starts up, you know you have some epic hardware at your hands. I always like the start up sound of them Seagate Cheetah 15K SCSI drives.

 

[DeScruff]

5 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

I just hate that they are called passive when it's really active cooling. These cards cant run with only passive heat dissipation but I guess no one wants a new word for heatsink that doesnt have a fan but requires a fan not attached to it to be blowing through it.

But they are technically passive they don't have fans on them, and they don't need a row of fans directly in front of and dedicated to just them. So to a server environment -which these cards are clearly marketed towards- they are passive.

Its be like if AMD marketed to...I dunno neural networking, render farms, or who/what-ever can actually use 100+ threads, a next generation 64 core EPYC as the fastest CPU on the market. But 9900K can outperform it in CSGO, so clearly it isn't the fastest CPU.

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, Sypran said:

But they are technically passive they don't have fans on them, and they don't need a row of fans directly in front of and dedicated to just them. So to a server environment -which these cards are clearly marketed towards- they are passive.

Its be like if AMD marketed to...I dunno neural networking, render farms, or who/what-ever can actually use 100+ threads, a next generation 64 core EPYC as the fastest CPU on the market. But 9900K can outperform it in CSGO, so clearly it isn't the fastest CPU.

So another term is needed: server style fanless maybe?  If you put them in a consumer case very bad things would happen.  They actually need to be packed tight like that to work.

[amdorintel]

2 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

But the way how the fan starts up, you know you have some epic hardware at your hands. I always like the start up sound of them Seagate Cheetah 15K SCSI drives.

 

is it a ramp up sound?

[leadeater]

55 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So another term is needed: server style fanless maybe?  If you put them in a consumer case very bad things would happen.  They actually need to be packed tight like that to work.

Passive is still used here, along with any server and PC part. The term is about the device in question, it has no fan therefore is passive. Anything passively cooled needs airflow or low enough operating temperature to work, that applies outside of server and PC parts too.

[NumLock21]

4 hours ago, amdorintel said:

is it a ramp up sound?

Yes the ramp up sound, the ones on Youtube don't seem to have the distinct noise the old ones have. Something is just missing from them.

[schwellmo92]

11 hours ago, Sypran said:

But they are technically passive they don't have fans on them, and they don't need a row of fans directly in front of and dedicated to just them

These always have fans ramming air at them and most don't even use the standard shroud/heatsink.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The industry calls anything without a fan on the unit itself a passively cooled device whether it still requires forced convection or not.

 

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other jargon or terms that the industry uses that people would disagree on, like 1TB being both 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, TSMC's 12nm really being 16nm with some 12nm areas, and whether Motorola's X8 platform should really be called an "8-core" system.

[Drak3]

8 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

like 1TB being both 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,099,511,627,776 bytes,

That’s an interesting one, because it would be a non-issue if Microsoft, Apple, and Google used the proper denotations (for what they’re actually measuring); TiB, GiB, MiB, and KiB.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That’s an interesting one, because it would be a non-issue if Microsoft, Apple, and Google used the proper denotations (for what they’re actually measuring); TiB, GiB, MiB, and KiB.

Apple and Ubuntu say 1TB is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. They don't bother with the binary method.

[Drak3]

38 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Apple and Ubuntu say 1TB is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. They don't bother with the binary method.

And strict technicality, they’re correct.

 

Canonical used to use TiB.

 

But it’s interesting that Apple actually uses the correct nomenclature for their measurements.

[Otto_iii]

23 hours ago, Drak3 said:

passive cool is the coolest

 +1 for pfp