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Nvidia Announces Tesla T4 GPUs With Turing Architecture
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at GTC Japan to announce the company's latest advancements in AI, which includes the new Tesla T4 GPU. This new GPU, which Nvidia designed for inference workloads in hyperscale data centers, leverages the same Turing microarchitecture as Nvidia's forthcoming GeForce RTX 20-series gaming graphics cards.
But the Tesla T4 is a unique graphics card designed specifically for AI inference workloads, like neural networks that process video, speech, search engines, and images. Nvidia's previous-gen Tesla P4 fulfilled this role in the past, but Nvidia claims the new model offers up to 12 times the floating performance within the same power envelope, possibly setting a new bar for power efficiency in inference workloads.
The Tesla T4 GPU comes equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 that provides up to 320GB/s of bandwidth, 320 Turning Tensor cores, and 2,560 CUDA cores. The GPU supports mixed-precision, such as FP32, FP16, and INT8 (performance above). The Tesla T4 also features an INT4 and (experimental) INT1 precision mode, which is a notable advancement over its predecessor.
Like its predecessor, the low-profile Tesla T4 consumes just 75 watts and slots into a standard PCIe slot in servers, but it doesn't require an external power source (like a 6-pin connector). Nvidia tells us that the die does come equipped with RT Cores, just like the desktop models, but that they will be useful for raytracing or VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), implying they won't be used for most inference workloads.
The Tesla T4 also features optimizations for AI video applications. These are powered by hardware transcoding engines that provide twice the performance of the Tesla P4. Nvidia says the cards can decode up to 38 full-HD video streams simultaneously.
As expected, the card supports all the major deep learning frameworks, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, MXNet, and Caffee2. Nvidia also offers its TensorRT 5, a new version of Nvidia's deep learning inference optimizer and runtime engine that supports Turing Tensor Cores and multi-precision workloads.
Nvidia also announced the AGX lineup, which is a new name for Nvidia's line of Xavier-based products that are designed for autonomous machine systems that range from robots to self-driving cars. The lineup includes Nvidia's Drive Pegasus, which the company confirmed uses two Xavier processors and two Turing GPUs. Nvidia is also offering a similar platform with a single Xavier processor and Turing GPU that is designed for medical applications.
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