Infrastructure Briefing — March 18, 2024
NVIDIA unveiled the Blackwell platform at GTC 2024, detailing B200 GPUs, GB200 superchips, and NVLink 5 networking that will reshape AI data center planning through 2025.
Executive briefing: NVIDIA used GTC 2024 to launch the Blackwell architecture, pairing dual B200 GPUs with Grace CPUs via GB200 NVL72 racks. Zeph Tech recommends refreshing capacity models and firmware roadmaps ahead of OEM releases in late 2024.
Key industry signals
- GB200 NVL72. Factory-integrated racks deliver 1.4 exaflops of FP4 performance with liquid cooling, altering power and facilities requirements.
- NVLink 5 + CX8. 1.8 TB/s of GPU-to-GPU bandwidth and 800G Ethernet fabric demand upgraded spine switches and cabling plans.
- Software roadmap. NVIDIA committed to CUDA, cuDNN, and Triton optimizations landing alongside Blackwell, including FP4 support for inference efficiency.
Control alignment
- Uptime Institute M&O. Update data center resiliency plans to handle the thermal envelope and maintenance cadence of liquid-cooled racks.
- NIST SP 800-53 PE-1 & PE-2. Document physical access controls and environmental monitoring updates required for Blackwell deployments.
Detection and response priorities
- Instrument telemetry for liquid cooling loops and power distribution units to catch anomalies before they disrupt workloads.
- Track firmware and driver release notes for GB200 nodes so SOC teams can flag vulnerabilities quickly.
Enablement moves
- Work with OEM partners (Dell, HPE, Supermicro) on lead times, service-level expectations, and integration services.
- Refresh capacity planning models to include mixed-precision workloads and the energy savings of FP4 inference.
Zeph Tech analysis
- Blackwell rewrites model economics. NVIDIA disclosed that each B200 integrates 208 billion transistors and 192 GB of HBM3e at 8 TB/s, while GB200 NVL72 racks deliver 1.4 exaflops of FP4 performance—30× the GPT inference throughput of an H100 cluster.
- Facility upgrades are non-negotiable. The NVL72 liquid-cooled design draws up to 120 kW per rack, forcing operators to reserve chilled-water capacity and redundant pumps ahead of 2025 deliveries.
- Software maturity remains critical. CUDA 12.4, TensorRT-LLM, and the new inference microservices are required to hit FP4 efficiency; Zeph Tech clients are staging simulation environments so application teams can validate quantisation before hardware arrives.
Zeph Tech assists infrastructure leaders with power modelling, supply coordination, and operations runbooks for upcoming Blackwell deployments.