NVIDIA Blackwell Platform to Power Advanced Computing

Powering a new era of computing, NVIDIA announces that the NVIDIA Blackwell platform has arrived—enabling organizations everywhere to build and run real-time generative artificial intelligence on trillion-parameter large language models for less cost and energy consumption than its predecessor.

The Blackwell GPU architecture features six technologies for accelerated computing, which will help unlock breakthroughs in data processing, engineering simulation, electronic design automation, computer-aided drug design, quantum computing and generative AI—all industry opportunities for NVIDIA.

“For three decades we’ve pursued accelerated computing, with the goal of enabling transformative breakthroughs like deep learning and AI,” says Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Generative AI is the defining technology of our time. Blackwell is the engine to power this new industrial revolution. Working with the most dynamic companies in the world, we will realize the promise of AI for every industry.”

Among the many organizations expected to adopt Blackwell are Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla and xAI.

Blackwell Innovations for Accelerated Computing and Generative AI

Blackwell’s six technologies, which together enable AI training and real-time LLM inference for models scaling up to 10 trillion parameters, include:

Powerful Chip—Packed with 208 billion transistors, Blackwell-architecture GPUs are manufactured using a custom-built 4NP TSMC process with two-reticle limit GPU dies connected by 10 TB/second chip-to-chip link into a single, unified GPU.

Second-Generation Transformer Engine—Fueled by new micro-tensor scaling support and NVIDIA’s advanced dynamic range management algorithms integrated into NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM and NeMo Megatron frameworks, Blackwell will support double the compute and model sizes with new 4-bit floating point AI inference capabilities.

Fifth-Generation NVLink—To accelerate performance for multitrillion-parameter and mixture-of-experts AI models, the latest iteration of NVIDIA NVLink delivers 1.8TB/s bidirectional throughput per GPU, ensuring high-speed communication among up to 576 GPUs for the most complex LLMs.

RAS Engine—Blackwell-powered GPUs include a dedicated engine for availability and serviceability. Additionally, the Blackwell architecture adds capabilities at the chip level to utilize AI-based preventative maintenance to run diagnostics and forecast reliability issues. 

Secure AI—Advanced confidential computing capabilities protect AI models and customer data without compromising performance, with support for new native interface encryption protocols.

Decompression Engine—A dedicated decompression engine supports the latest formats, accelerating database queries to deliver the highest performance in data analytics and data science. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.

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