NVIDIA Ampere-based Architecture
NVIDIA A40 is the world's most powerful data center GPU for visual computing, offering high performance real-time ray tracing, AI-accelerated compute, and professional graphics rendering. Building upon the major SM enhancements from the Turing GPU, the NVIDIA Ampere architecture enhances ray tracing operations, tensor matrix operations, and concurrent executions of FP32 and INT32 operations.
CUDA Cores
The NVIDIA Ampere architecture’s CUDA Cores bring up to 2.5x the single-precision floating point (FP32) throughput compared to the previous generation, providing significant performance improvements for graphics workflows such as 3D model development and compute for workloads such as desktop simulation for computer-aided engineering (CAE).
Second Generation RT Cores
Incorporating second generation ray tracing engines, the NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture provides incredible ray traced rendering performance. A single NVIDIA A40 board can render complex professional models with physically accurate shadows, reflections, and refractions to empower users with instant insight. Working in concert with applications leveraging APIs such as NVIDIA OptiX, Microsoft DXR and Vulkan ray tracing, servers based on NVIDIA A40 will power truly interactive design workflows to provide immediate feedback for unprecedented levels of productivity. NVIDIA A40 is up to 2x faster in ray tracing compared to the previous generation. This technology also speeds up the rendering of ray-traced motion blur by up to 7x for faster results with greater visual accuracy through hardware accelerating Motion BVH (Bounding Volume Hierarchy).
Third Generation Tensor Cores
Purpose-built for deep learning matrix arithmetic at the heart of neural network training and inferencing functions, the NVIDIA A40 includes enhanced Tensor Cores that accelerate more datatypes (TF32 and BF16) and includes a new Fine-Grained Structured Sparsity feature that delivers up to 2x throughput for tensor matrix operations compared to the previous generation.
PCIe Gen 4
The NVIDIA A40 supports PCI Express Gen 4, which provides double the bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3, improving data-transfer speeds from CPU memory for data-intensive tasks like AI and data science.
Higher Speed GDDR6 Memory
Built with 48GB GDDR6 memory delivering up to 10% greater throughput for ray tracing, rendering, and AI workloads than the previous generation. The NVIDIA A40 provides the industry’s largest graphics memory footprint to address the largest datasets and models in latency-sensitive professional applications.
Error Correcting Code (ECC) on Graphics Memory
Meet strict data integrity requirements for mission critical applications with uncompromised computing accuracy and reliability for workstations.
Fifth Generation NVDEC Engine
NVDEC is well suited for transcoding and video playback applications for real-time decoding. The following video codecs are supported for hardware-accelerated decoding: MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 (AVCHD), H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, and AV1.
Seventh Generation NVENC Engine
NVENC can take on the most demanding 4K or 8K video encoding tasks to free up the graphics engine and the CPU for other operations. NVIDIA A40 provides better encoding quality than software-based x264 encoders.
Preemption
Preemption at the instruction-level provides finer grain control over compute and graphics tasks to prevent longer-running applications from either monopolizing system resources or timing out.
DisplayPort 1.4a
Supports up to three 5K monitors at 60Hz, or dual 8K displays at 60Hz per card. The NVIDIA A40 supports HDR color for 4K at 60Hz for 10/12b HEVC decode and up to 4K at 60Hz for 10b HEVC encode. Each DisplayPort connector can drive ultra-high resolutions of 4096 x 2160 at 120 Hz with 30-bit color. A40 is configured for virtualization by default with physical display connectors disabled. The display outputs can be enabled via management software tools.
NVIDIA Quadro Mosaic Technology
Transparently scale the desktop and applications across up to 12 displays from 4 GPUs while delivering full performance and image quality.
NVIDIA Quadro Sync II
Synchronize the display and image output of up to 24 displays from 8 GPUs (connected through two Sync II boards) in a single system, reducing the number of machines needed to create an advanced video visualization environment.
Frame Lock Connector Latch
Each frame lock connector is designed with a self-locking retention mechanism to secure its connection with the frame lock cable to provide robust connectivity and maximum productivity.
Virtual GPU Software for Virtualization
Support for NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software enables A40 to be virtualized to accelerate high-end design, AI, and compute workloads. The NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (vWS) license provides access to the world’s most powerful virtual workstations to enable flexible, work-from-anywhere solutions, while the NVIDIA Virtual Compute Server (vCS) license accelerates virtualized compute workloads such as high-performance computing, AI and data science.
Software Optimized for AI
Deep learning frameworks such as Caffe2, MXNet, CNTK, TensorFlow, and others deliver dramatically faster training times and higher multi-node training performance. GPU accelerated libraries such as cuDNN, cuBLAS, and TensorRT delivers higher performance for both deep learning inference and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications.
NVIDIA CUDA Parallel Computing Platform
Natively execute standard programming languages like C/C++ and Fortran, and APIs such as OpenCL, OpenACC and Direct Compute to accelerates techniques such as ray tracing, video and image processing, and computation fluid dynamics.
Unified Memory
A single, seamless 49-bit virtual address space allows for the transparent migration of data between the full allocation of CPU and GPU memory.
NVIDIA GPUDirect
Supports a family of technologies to speed communication between the GPU and devices like NICs or Video I/O boards by reducing CPU overhead and minimizing copies.
NVIDIA RTX Desktop Manager
Gain unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience for increased productivity in single large display or multi-display environments.
NVIDIA RTX Experience
RTX Experience delivers a suite of productivity tools to your desktop workstation, including 4K recording, automatic alerts for the latest Quadro driver updates, and access gaming features. The application is available to download at www.nvidia.com/quadro-experience.