Cisco UCSX-GPU-A100-80 | A100 Tensor Core GPU, 80GB HBM2e, 300W Passive, PCIe Gen4

Q: What Cisco UCS servers support the UCSX-GPU-A100-80?
A: This GPU is compatible with Cisco UCS X-Series modular systems (UCSX-440P PCIe node with X9508 chassis) and select UCS C-Series rack servers (C240 M6/M7). It requires PCIe Gen4 x16 slots (Riser 1A slot 2, Riser 2A slot 5, or Riser 3C slot 7). Each compatible server can support up to three of these GPUs, depending on riser configuration and power capacity.

Q: What is Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) and how does it work on the A100 80GB?
A: MIG allows the A100 to be partitioned into up to seven isolated GPU instances, each with 10GB of memory in the 80GB variant. Each instance operates with dedicated memory, compute resources, and quality-of-service guarantees, enabling multiple users or workloads to share a single GPU securely and efficiently. This is ideal for consolidating diverse AI inference, training, and HPC workloads in elastic data center environments.

Q: How does the PCIe A100 80GB differ from the SXM variant?
A: The PCIe variant (UCSX-GPU-A100-80) offers 300W TDP and 1,935 GB/s memory bandwidth, using a standard PCIe Gen4 x16 interface for broad server compatibility. The SXM variant runs at 400W TDP with 2,039 GB/s bandwidth and supports NVLink for multi-GPU interconnects at 600 GB/s. The PCIe model is ideal for standard rack servers, while SXM is optimized for NVIDIA HGX baseboard deployments.

Q: What precision formats does the A100 Tensor Core support?
A: The A100's third-generation Tensor Cores support FP64, FP32, TF32 (Tensor Float 32), BF16 (BFloat16), FP16, INT8, and INT4 precisions. TF32 delivers 20x the performance of FP32 on V100 for AI training without code changes, while structured sparsity can double throughput for FP16/BF16 and INT8 workloads, reaching up to 624 TFLOPS and 1,248 TOPS respectively.

Q: Why must A100 GPUs be procured from Cisco for UCS systems?
A: Cisco UCS systems require GPUs with a unique SBIOS ID for proper recognition by CIMC (Cisco Integrated Management Controller) and UCSM (UCS Manager). Only Cisco-validated A100 SKUs like the UCSX-GPU-A100-80 include the necessary firmware and management integration for full compatibility, monitoring, and inventory reporting within the UCS ecosystem.