Intel Vision 2024 is all about AI. But like it or not, that’s where the hype and the money is. And Intel has to keep the store running too. With the unveiling of its Gaudi 3 gas pedal, the blues are showing their muscles and attempting to demonstrate that they are capable of competing with Nvidia in this field. To support this claim, Intel has carried out a short comparison based on laboratory tests. Compared with the Nvidia H100 GPU, the Gaudi 3 is up to 50% faster, while consuming less energy.
Gaudi 3: Intel already competitive, but unable to produce it itself
The Intel Gaudi 3 AI gas pedal is equipped with 128 GB HBM2E memory (3.7 TB/s bandwidth) and a TDP of 600W in its PCI-Express 5.0 x16 version. With the same interface, but in the form of a Mezzanine Card (PMC), its TDP rises to 900W . At a time when demand is exploding and current manufacturers are struggling to keep up with supply, Intel has announced that it will launch Gaudi 3 on the market as early as this quarter. This statement raises questions about the entity that will produce these boards… But the fact that 5nm etching is specified seems to confirm that TSMC will do the job.
| Gaudi 3 | Gaudi 2 | Gaudi (1) | |
| Matrix Math Engines | 8 | 2 | 1 |
| Tensor Cores | 64 | 24 | 8 |
| Clockspeed | ? | ? | ? |
| Memory Clock | 3.7Gbps HBM2e | 3.27Gbps HBM2e | 2Gbps HBM2 |
| Memory Bus Width | 2x 4096-bit | 6144-bit | 4096-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 3.7TB/sec | 2.45TB/sec | 1TB/sec |
| VRAM | 128GB (2x 64GB) |
96GB | 32GB |
| FP8 Matrix | 1835 TFLOPS | 865 TFLOPS | N/A |
| BF16 Matrix | 1835 TFLOPS | 432 TFLOPS | ? TFLOPS |
| Interconnect | 200Gb Ethernet 24 Links (600GB/sec) |
100Gb Ethernet 24 Links (300GB/sec) |
100Gb Ethernet 10 Links (120GB/sec) |
| Processor | Gaudi 3 | Gaudi 2 | Gaudi (1) |
| Transistor Count | 2x (A lot) | ? | ? |
| TDP | 900W | 600W | 350W |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 5nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 16nm |
| Interface | OAM 2.0 | OAM 1.1 | OAM |
In the ever-changing landscape of the AI market, a significant gap remains in the current offering. Companies are taking into account considerations such as availability, scalability, performance, cost and energy efficiency. Intel Gaudi 3 stands out as the GenAI alternative that offers a compelling combination of value for money, system scalability and time-to-value advantage. (Justin Hotard, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group)
