ThinkSystem NVIDIA A40 48GB PCIe Gen4 Passive GPU

The NVIDIA A40 is a powerful data center GPU for visual computing, delivering high performance and capabilities to professionals for graphics-based workloads such as ray traced rendering, high-performance virtual workstations, simulation, 3D design, VR, and virtual production. The A40 GPU is a graphics-based virtualization solution for designers, engineers, scientists, and creatives that need this performance from anywhere in the world.

The third-generation Tensor Core technology supports a broad range of math precisions providing a unified workload accelerator for data analytics, AI training, AI inference, and HPC. Accelerating both scale-up and scale-out workloads on one platform enables elastic data centers that can dynamically adjust to shifting application workload demands. This simultaneously boosts throughput and drives down the cost of data centers.

Figure 1. ThinkSystem NVIDIA A40 48GB PCIe Gen4 Passive GPU

The NVIDIA A40 GPU is a high-performance GPU that offers local DisplayPort video. It supports up to four 5K monitors at 60Hz, or dual 8K displays at 60Hz per card, using Display Stream Compression (DSC). 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 4096x2160 at 120 Hz with 30-bit color.

The following table shows the part numbers for the NVIDIA A40 GPU.

The PCIe option part numbers includes the following:

• One NVIDIA A40 GPU with full-height (3U) adapter bracket attached
• Documentation

GPUs without a CEC chip: The NVIDIA A40 GPU is offered without a CEC chip (look for "w/o CEC" in the name). The CEC is a secondary Hardware Root of Trust (RoT) module that provides an additional layer of security, which can be used by customers who have high regulatory requirements or high security standards. NVIDIA uses a multi-layered security model and hence the protection offered by the primary Root of Trust embedded in the GPU is expected to be sufficient for most customers. The CEC defeatured products still offer Secure Boot, Secure Firmware Update, Firmware Rollback Protection, and In-Band Firmware Update Disable. Specifically, without the CEC chip, the GPU does not support Key Revocation or Firmware Attestation. CEC and non-CEC GPUs of the same type of GPU can be mixed in field upgrades.

The ThinkSystem NVIDIA A40 48GB PCIe Gen4 Passive GPU offers the following features:

• NVIDIA Ampere 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 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 2X 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).

• 2nd Generation RT Cores

  Incorporating 2nd generation ray tracing engines, the NVIDIA Ampere 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 for faster results with greater visual accuracy.

• 3rd 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.

• High Speed GDDR6 Memory

  Built with 48GB GDDR6 memory, 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.

• 5th Generation NVDEC Engine

  NVDEC, implemented in concert with software applications, 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. Pairing this technology with NVIDIA Ampere architecture- based Tensor Cores, the A40 can quickly apply AI and inferencing to real-time video.

• 7th 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. NVENC also enables virtual workstations to stream up to 8K content for high fidelity design and rendering workloads. In addition, the 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.

• Multi-GPU technology - 3rd Generation NVIDIA NVLink

  Connect two NVIDIA A40 cards with NVLink to double the effective memory footprint and scale application performance by enabling GPU-to-GPU data transfers at rates up to 112.5 GB/s (total bandwidth).

• DisplayPort 1.4a

  Supports up to four 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 4096x2160 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. See Lenovo support tip HT512536 for details: https://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/us/en/solution/ht512536

  DisplayPort 1.4a supports 8K at 60Hz over a single cable using Display Stream Compression (DSC). The A40 has 3 DisplayPort 1.4a connectors, DSC capable 8K displays are required for the A40 to drive two 8K displays.

• 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. For more information, see the NVIDIA Quadro Sync page, https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/solutions/quadro-sync/

• 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.

The following table lists the NVIDIA A40 GPU specifications.

* With structural sparsity enabled
** To enable the DisplayPort ports, see https://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/us/en/solution/ht512536

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

The following table lists the supported operating systems:

This section lists the NVIDIA software that is available from Lenovo.

• NVIDIA vGPU Software (vApps, vPC, RTX vWS, and vCS)
• NVIDIA Omniverse Software (OVE)
• NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software
• NVIDIA HPC Compiler Software

• Virtual PC (vPC)

  This product is ideal for users who want a virtual desktop but need great user experience leveraging PC Windows® applications, browsers and high-definition video. NVIDIA Virtual PC delivers a native experience to users in a virtual environment, allowing them to run all their PC applications at full performance.

• NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation (RTX vWS)

  NVIDIA RTX vWS is the only virtual workstation that supports NVIDIA RTX technology, bringing advanced features like ray tracing, AI-denoising, and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) to a virtual environment. Supporting the latest generation of NVIDIA GPUs unlocks the best performance possible, so designers and engineers can create their best work faster. IT can virtualize any application from the data center with an experience that is indistinguishable from a physical workstation — enabling workstation performance from any device.

• Virtual Compute Server (vCS)

  NVIDIA Virtual Compute Server (vCS) enables data centers running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Virtualization, and other supported KVM-based hypervisors to accelerate server virtualization with the latest NVIDIA data center GPUs, so that the most compute-intensive workloads, such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, and data science, can be run in a virtual machine (VM) powered by NVIDIA vGPU technology.

The following license types are offered:

• Perpetual license

  A non-expiring, permanent software license that can be used on a perpetual basis without the need to renew. Each Lenovo part number includes a fixed number of years of Support, Upgrade and Maintenance (SUMS).

• Annual subscription

  A software license that is active for a fixed period as defined by the terms of the subscription license, typically yearly. The subscription includes Support, Upgrade and Maintenance (SUMS) for the duration of the license term.

• Concurrent User (CCU)

  A method of counting licenses based on active user VMs. If the VM is active and the NVIDIA vGPU software is running, then this counts as one CCU. A vGPU CCU is independent of the connection to the VM.

The following table lists the ordering part numbers and feature codes.

NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software

Lenovo offers the NVIDIA AI Enterprise (NVAIE) cloud-native enterprise software. NVIDIA AI Enterprise is an end-to-end, cloud-native suite of  AI and data analytics software, optimized, certified, and supported by NVIDIA to run on VMware vSphere and bare-metal  with NVIDIA-Certified  Systems™.  It includes key enabling technologies from NVIDIA for rapid deployment, management, and scaling of AI workloads in the modern hybrid cloud.

NVIDIA AI Enterprise is licensed on a per-GPU basis. NVIDIA AI Enterprise products can be purchased as either a perpetual license with support services, or as an annual or multi-year subscription.

The features of NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software are listed in the following table.

Note: Maximum 10 concurrent VMs per product license

The following table lists the ordering part numbers and feature codes.

Find more information in the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Sizing Guide.

NVIDIA HPC Compiler Software

The A40 option part number does not ship with auxiliary power cables. Cables are server-specific due to length requirements. For CTO orders, auxiliary power cables are derived by the configurator. For field upgrades, cables will need to be ordered separately as listed in the table below.

The NVIDIA A40 GPU has the following regulatory approvals:

• RCM
• BSMI
• CE
• FCC
• ICES
• KCC
• cUL, UL
• VCCI

The NVIDIA A40 GPU has the following operating characteristics:

• Ambient temperature
  • Operational: 0°C to 50°C (-5°C to 55°C for short term*)
  • Storage: -40°C to 75°C
• Relative humidity:
  • Operational: 5-85% (5-93% short term*)
  • Storage: 5-95%

* A period not more than 96 hours consecutive, not to exceed 15 days per year.

One year limited warranty. When installed in a Lenovo server, the GPU assumes the server’s base warranty and any warranty upgrades.

For more information, refer to these documents:

• ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile GPU Summary:
  https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp0768-thinksystem-thinkagile-gpu-summary
• ServerProven compatibility:
  https://serverproven.lenovo.com/
• NVIDIA A40 product page:
  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/a40/
• NVIDIA Ampere Architecture page
  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/ampere-architecture/