According to recent retail listings, Nvidia appears to be selling A100 "Ampere" graphics processors in China with a higher number of cores than the original specs. It's no surprise that the Chinese market is always full of quirky products to see and explore, such as the mobile version of NVIDIA's flagship Ada Lovelace SKU being remodeled as a desktop model with an adapter board, or the prototype heatsink for the RTX 4090 GPU. Now, a new variant of the Nvidia A100 AI GPU has appeared on the Chinese market, and its specifications are even better than the original design.
Let's start with a quick recap of NVIDIA's A100s. The GPU is based on an ampere architecture and is available in two different configurations, 40 GB and 80 GB, with differences in memory and speed. Both GPU offerings have 6912 CUDA cores, but the new model has 7936 cores, 15% more than the previous model, and 100 fewer SMs than the full GA2 GPU (8192 cores).
The new Nvidia Ampere A100 GPU also comes with 96 GB of HBM2E memory and a 6144-bit bus interface, which means that we will see 6 8-hi stacks with a capacity of 16 GB per module. According to the images provided in the list, the graphics card comes in a PCIe form factor and is a prototype device originally designed for the GRID system.
The graphics card has three 8-pin connectors and a huge GPU that sits underneath a huge IHS. The memory chip is not on the PCB, but on the GPU package, as the graphics card is based on HBM instead of the traditional GDDR DRAM that is common on consumer graphics cards.
The base clock speed is 1260 MHz, and the boost clock speed is not mentioned, but the GPU can produce about 20 TFLOPs of single-precision computing power and 10 TFLOPs of double-precision computing power. For reference, the A100 PCIe 80 GB has 19.5 TFLOPs of single-precision computing power and 9.74 TFLOPs of double-precision computing power.
Now, the reason behind this difference is not entirely certain, but it could be Nvidia's tailor-made solution for specific customers, and although GPUs were produced back in 2020, they are now on the market. Listings of some of the same A100 96 GB models can also be found on eBay, here and here. The GPU sells for around $17,000 to $20,000.