At GTC 2024, we saw a really unique NVIDIA HGX platform. The Inventec P8000IG6 is designed to work not just with the existing HGX A100 and HGX H100 today but also with the upcoming HGX B100 “Blackwell” platform when that ships. Inventec is taking a very different approach to the system which makes it really unique.
Unique Inventec P8000IG6 8x NVIDIA B100 System Shown at GTC 2024
The Inventec P8000IG6 is a massive system at 8U. The 8U platforms have become popular because most customers cannot handle more than 30kW per rack. That is why so many GPU clusters have only two GPU servers per rack leaving lots of empty space.
Inventec’s system has a pull-out GPU but also a GPU section that is front serviceable. Some traditional OEMs do not do this making their systems much more expensive to service.
Behind this area is the PCIe switch area. If you want to know why we have been covering PCIe switches, retimers, and so forth, this is a great view of that.
The rear shows us what is really different. The center of the chassis is comprised of hot-swap fans. The power supplies are on the top and bottom of the chassis, and they are different. On top, there is a 3+3 redundant 3.3kW PSU array for the 54V GPU tray. On the bottom, there are two 2.4kW PSUs for 1+1 redundant 12V power for the CPU part of the server. Most servers have a single type of PSU and then convert internally. This one uses two different types of PSUs.
Even the 8x PCIe Gen5 x16 low-profile slots are on their own trays that can be serviced directly from the rear.
Overall, this is a really different take on the HGX platform.
Inventec GB200 NVL72 at GTC 2024
As a bonus, we also saw the Inventec GB200 NVL72 at the show. At 120kW, this is much higher power than the HGX platforms.
Here we can see the compute nodes above the NVLink switches. These systems need to have compute nodes split due to the current on the 48V bus bar as well as the NVLink cabling.
These systems still need chips, but they are interesting to see.
Final Words
Overall, seeing vendors use more modern serviceable designs with the HGX platforms is fun. Seeing the different types of power supplies solves a practical problem and is certainly one of the more unique designs in the market.
We will have a lot of NVIDIA system reviews coming over the next few quarters. Stay tuned for more.
