Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia A100 GPU

Re:Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia ... by baybal2 on Thursday May 14, 2020 @03:15PM (#23184058)

Ironically, that's what they put on the PCB. Those yellow things on both side of the chip package are actual micro transformers made of some material with very tricky magnetic properties.

I wonder, was the name Ampere a reference to its titanic current consumption?

Those only reason to put those on the PCB would be to provide current above 1kA

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Re:Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia ... by blattimwind on Thursday May 14, 2020 @07:16PM (#23186798)

You're looking at an SXM module, so that PCB is the whole thing. TDP is 400 W. I assume these run at a sub-1 V core voltage due to their relatively low clocks, so yeah, you are looking at a core supply current that may well exceed 500 A at full load and has to be provided by those VRMs crammed on that board.

Worth pointing out that that's not really new. Gaming cards have been running at about a Volt for a bunch of years now and all of those chuck 250+ W, so the currents are rather substantial.

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