Advancement of AI: Blackwell vs. other GPUs

NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs, particularly the B200 model, represent a significant advancement over previous generations and other GPUs in the market. Here’s a short comparison based on the latest information:

• Performance
  The Blackwell B200 GPU delivers up to 20 petaflops of AI performance, which is a substantial increase from the 4 petaflops offered by a single H100 GPU1. This means that the Blackwell B200 is 4 times faster than its predecessor, the Hopper H100, in AI training performance and offers 30 times the inference performance.
  
  
• Transistor Count 
  The B200 packs 208 billion transistors, more than doubling the transistor count of the existing H100, which has 80 billion.
  
  
• Memory and Bandwidth 
  It features 192GB of HBM3e memory offering up to 8 TB/s of bandwidth.
  
  
• Architecture 
  Unlike traditional single GPUs, the Blackwell B200 is comprised of two tightly coupled die, functioning as one unified CUDA GPU. They are linked via a 10 TB/s NV-HBI (Nvidia High Bandwidth Interface) connection.
  
  
• FP64 and FP32 FMA Performance 
  Blackwell GPUs are designed to deliver 30% more FP64 and FP32 FMA (fused multiply-add) performance than Hopper. For instance, while a single Hopper GPU offers around 34 TFLOPs of FP64 compute performance, a single Blackwell B100 GPU is said to deliver around 45 TFLOPs.
  
  
• Dual-Chipset Design 
  The Blackwell GPUs (B100 & B200) adopt dual-chipset designs, representing a significant leap from Hopper. For example, the B100 has 128 billion more transistors and five times the AI performance of the H100.
  
  
• Scientific Computing 
  With Blackwell GPUs, simulations are projected to run up to 30 times faster than with CPUs, offering accelerated timelines and higher energy efficiency.

In a nutshell, NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs, especially the B200, offer massive improvements in AI training and inference performance, memory bandwidth, and scientific computing capabilities compared to previous generations and other GPUs currently available. These advancements make Blackwell a formidable platform for a wide range of applications in AI and scientific computing.