Nvidia tapes-out B300 Blackwell, says report
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Nvidia Corp. has taped-out an upgraded Blackwell GPU, the B300, and tipped an improved Grace-Blackwell component, the GB300, according to SemiAnalysis.
The B300 design targets the same 4NP 4nm-nominal manufacturing process from foundry TSMC that is used for B100 and B200. However, tweaks to the design deliver up to 50 percent higher FLOPS performance compared with B200, the report states, without disclosing its sources. The B300 GPU also makes use of 12-layer HBM3E DRAMs growing the memory capacity per GPU to 288Gbytes although memory bandwidth remains the same at 8terabytes per second per GPU.
Nvidia launched its B100, B200 Blackwell GPUs and the GB200 component, which features an ARM-based CPU plus two GPUs, in March 2024. The original Blackwell parts’ introduction has been clouded by reports of the GPUs overheating in server racks.
However, the set-up of the racks, the use of liquid-cooling, and internal thermal monitoring along with performance management techniques are complex and leaves a lot for hyperscaler customers to configure and iterate with rack suppliers.
Runs hotter
The B300 series Blackwell parts have an increased thermal design budget of 1.2kW per CPU – compared with 1kW on the B200, and with greater memory capacity will be well placed for reasoning inference applications, SemiAnalysis said.
Leading-edge wafers on which chips are made typically spend about three months on the production line and this together with time in wafer-level test, packaging and component test typically dictate a six-month minimum period from tape-out chip shipments.
The B300 provides some differences to B200/GB200 in packaging, according to SemiAnalysis. Reportedly Nvidia will only supply B300 on an “SXM Puck” module and the Grace CPU in a BGA package leaving customers to procure more components on the compute board. The recommended host management controller (HMC) is from startup Axiado Inc. and the second-tier memory is LPCAMM modules likely from Micron.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, is due to present a keynote address to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 7, 2025, where he may take the opportunity to confirm the B300.
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