Nvidia Grace CPU Superchip
The Nvidia Grace CPU Superchip is said to be twice as fast as both the AMD Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapids at the same power consumption, with the chip benchmarked against both the EPYC 9654 and Xeon Platinum 8480+ processors. The latest news comes just days after a report suggested that Nvidia has pushed back the Grace launch.
Nvidia says the new chip is capable of delivering “up to 2X the performance of the competition at the same power consumption”, with the chip benchmarked against two of the biggest players in the server CPU market.
The Nvidia Grace Superchip features two 72-core chips on a single board, with the chip featuring an NVLink-C2C interface and up to 900 GB/s bandwidth.
In a set of benchmarks shared by Nvidia, the chip is put against AMD’s EPYC 9654 and Intel’s Xeon Platinum 8480+ processors. Testing was performed on five specialized workloads, including Weather WRF, MD CP2K, Climate NEMO, CFD OpenFOAM, and Graph Analytics GapBS BFS.
In every test, the Grace chip outperforms the Xeon Platinum 8480+, with the exception of Graph Analytics GapBS BFS where it holds a 40% lead over AMD. In most workloads, the EPYC 9654 actually outperforms the Xeon, with the exception of CFD OpenFOAM and Graph Analytics GapBS BFS, where it ties with the Intel processor.
Nvidia says that the chip is capable of delivering 2.5 times more power efficiency, with the firm claiming that a 5 MW data center could be powered by just 225kW with a Grace Superchip installed. The AMD EPYC 9654 and Xeon Platinum 8480+ both have default TDPs of 360W and 350W respectively, meaning they’ll likely draw similar amounts of power.
Despite the positive benchmarking, Nvidia has reportedly delayed the Grace launch until the second half of this year. The chip was initially set to arrive in April, but recent rumours suggest that it has experienced a setback. We’ll be keeping an eye out for more news about the chip in the coming months.
