AMD’s Flagship Instinct MI100 CDNA GPU Based Accelerator For HPC Launches on 16th November, The World’s Fastest Double Precision Powerhouse

AMD is all set to unveil its next-generation CDNA GPU-based Instinct MI100 accelerator on the 16th of November as per tech outlet, Aroged. The information comes from leaked documents which are part of the embargoed datasheets for its next-generation data center and HPC accelerators lineup.

AMD Instinct MI100 With First-Generation CDNA Architecture Launches on 16th November - Aims To Tackle NVIDIA's A100 In The Data Center Segment With Fastest Double Precision Power

The AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator was confirmed by AMD's CTO, Mark Papermaster, almost 5 months ago. Back then, Mark stated that they will be introducing the cDNA based Instinct GPU by the second half of 2020. Since we approach end of year, it looks like AMD is now all set to launch the most powerful data center GPU it has ever built under the leadership of RTG's new chief, David Wang.

AMD's Radeon Instinct MI100 will be utilizing the CDNA architecture which is entirely different than the RDNA architecture that gamers will have access to later this month. The CDNA architecture has been designed specifically for the HPC segment and will be pitted against NVIDIA's Ampere A100 & similar accelerator cards.

ased on what we have learned from various prototype leaks, the Radeon Instinct MI100 'Arcturus' GPU will feature several variants. The flagship variant goes in the D34303 SKU which makes use of the XL variant. The info for this part is based on a test board so it is likely that final specifications would not be the same but here are the key points:

• Based on Arcturus GPUs (1st Gen cDNA)
• Test Board has a TDP of 200W (Final variants ~300-350W)
• Up To 32 GB HBM2e Memory

Specifications that were previously leaked by AdoredTV suggest that the AMD Instinct MI100 will feature 34 TFLOPs of FP32 compute per GPU. Each Radeon Instinct MI100 GPU will have a TDP of 300W. Each GPU will feature 32 GB of HBM2e memory which should pump out 1.225 TB/s of total bandwidth.

As per the embargo, the AMD Instinct MI100 HPC accelerator will be unveiled on 16th November at 8 AM CDT.

AMD Radeon Instinct Accelerators

Accelerator Name	AMD Instinct MI400	AMD Instinct MI350X	AMD Instinct MI300X	AMD Instinct MI300A	AMD Instinct MI250X	AMD Instinct MI250	AMD Instinct MI210	AMD Instinct MI100	AMD Radeon Instinct MI60	AMD Radeon Instinct MI50	AMD Radeon Instinct MI25	AMD Radeon Instinct MI8	AMD Radeon Instinct MI6
CPU Architecture	Zen 5 (Exascale APU)	N/A	N/A	Zen 4 (Exascale APU)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
GPU Architecture	CDNA 4	CDNA 3+?	Aqua Vanjaram (CDNA 3)	Aqua Vanjaram (CDNA 3)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Aldebaran (CDNA 2)	Arcturus (CDNA 1)	Vega 20	Vega 20	Vega 10	Fiji XT	Polaris 10
GPU Process Node	4nm	4nm	5nm+6nm	5nm+6nm	6nm	6nm	6nm	7nm FinFET	7nm FinFET	7nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	28nm	14nm FinFET
GPU Chiplets	TBD	TBD	8 (MCM)	8 (MCM)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	2 (MCM) 1 (Per Die)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)	1 (Monolithic)
GPU Cores	TBD	TBD	19,456	14,592	14,080	13,312	6656	7680	4096	3840	4096	4096	2304
GPU Clock Speed	TBD	TBD	2100 MHz	2100 MHz	1700 MHz	1700 MHz	1700 MHz	1500 MHz	1800 MHz	1725 MHz	1500 MHz	1000 MHz	1237 MHz
INT8 Compute	TBD	TBD	2614 TOPS	1961 TOPS	383 TOPs	362 TOPS	181 TOPS	92.3 TOPS	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
FP16 Compute	TBD	TBD	1.3 PFLOPs	980.6 TFLOPs	383 TFLOPs	362 TFLOPs	181 TFLOPs	185 TFLOPs	29.5 TFLOPs	26.5 TFLOPs	24.6 TFLOPs	8.2 TFLOPs	5.7 TFLOPs
FP32 Compute	TBD	TBD	163.4 TFLOPs	122.6 TFLOPs	95.7 TFLOPs	90.5 TFLOPs	45.3 TFLOPs	23.1 TFLOPs	14.7 TFLOPs	13.3 TFLOPs	12.3 TFLOPs	8.2 TFLOPs	5.7 TFLOPs
FP64 Compute	TBD	TBD	81.7 TFLOPs	61.3 TFLOPs	47.9 TFLOPs	45.3 TFLOPs	22.6 TFLOPs	11.5 TFLOPs	7.4 TFLOPs	6.6 TFLOPs	768 GFLOPs	512 GFLOPs	384 GFLOPs
VRAM	TBD	HBM3e	192 GB HBM3	128 GB HBM3	128 GB HBM2e	128 GB HBM2e	64 GB HBM2e	32 GB HBM2	32 GB HBM2	16 GB HBM2	16 GB HBM2	4 GB HBM1	16 GB GDDR5
Infinity Cache	TBD	TBD	256 MB	256 MB	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Memory Clock	TBD	TBD	5.2 Gbps	5.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	3.2 Gbps	1200 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	945 MHz	500 MHz	1750 MHz
Memory Bus	TBD	TBD	8192-bit	8192-bit	8192-bit	8192-bit	4096-bit	4096-bit bus	4096-bit bus	4096-bit bus	2048-bit bus	4096-bit bus	256-bit bus
Memory Bandwidth	TBD	TBD	5.3 TB/s	5.3 TB/s	3.2 TB/s	3.2 TB/s	1.6 TB/s	1.23 TB/s	1 TB/s	1 TB/s	484 GB/s	512 GB/s	224 GB/s
Form Factor	TBD	TBD	OAM	APU SH5 Socket	OAM	OAM	Dual Slot Card	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Full Length	Dual Slot, Half Length	Single Slot, Full Length
Cooling	TBD	TBD	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling	Passive Cooling
TDP (Max)	TBD	TBD	750W	760W	560W	500W	300W	300W	300W	300W	300W	175W	150W

AMD's Radeon Instinct MI100 'CDNA GPU' Performance Numbers, An FP32 Powerhouse In The Making?

In terms of performance, the AMD Radeon Instinct MI100 was compared to the NVIDIA Volta V100 and the NVIDIA Ampere A100 GPU accelerators. Interestingly, the slides mention a 300W Ampere A100 accelerator although no such configuration exists which means that these slides are based on a hypothesized A100 configuration rather than an actual variant which comes in two flavors, the 400W config in the SXM form factor and the 250W config which comes in the PCIe form factor.

As per the benchmarks, the Radeon Instinct MI100 delivers around 13% better FP32 performance versus the Ampere A100 and over 2x performance increase versus the Volta V100 GPUs. The perf to value ratio is also compared with the MI100 offering around 2.4x better value compared to the V100S and 50% better value than the Ampere A100. It is also shown that the performance scaling is near-linear even with up to 32 GPU configurations in Resenet which is quite impressive.

AMD Radeon Instinct MI100 vs NVIDIA's Ampere A100 HPC Accelerator (Image Credits: AdoredTV):

With that said, the slides also mention that AMD will offer much better performance and value in three specific segments which include Oil & Gas, Academia, and HPC & Machine Learning. In the rest of the HPC workloads such as AI & data analytics, NVIDIA will offer much superior performance with its A100 accelerator. NVIDIA also holds the benefit of Multi-Instance GPU architecture over AMD. The performance metrics show 2.5x better FP64 performance, 2x better FP16 performance, and twice the tensor performance thanks to the latest gen Tensor cores on the Ampere A100 GPU.

In addition to the Instinct MI100, AMD is also going to introduce its Instinct V640 and V620 GPU accelerators. Specifications of these products are not known yet but we will learn more on them soon.

AMD has proved that they can offer more FLOPs at a competitive price so maybe that is where Arcturus would be targetting. With 2H 2020 now set for the Radeon Instinct MI100, we will soon know how AMD's latest CDNA architecture competes against NVIDIA's Ampere based A100 GPU accelerator in the HPC segment.

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