Nvidia Announces New L40S GPU For AI And 3-D Applications

Nvidia revealed a versatile data center GPU that can run AI training and inference workloads faster than its previous flagship A100 GPU in addition to demanding graphics and simulation applications.

Called the L40S, the GPU is based on Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, and it comes with 48GB of memory, fourth-generation Tensor Cores and an FP8 Transformer Engine to provide more than 1.45 petaflops of “tensor processing power,” according to Nvidia.

These attributes help the processor deliver up to 20 percent faster inference performance and up to 70 percent faster training performance for generative AI models compared to the A100.

For high-fidelity visualization workloads like real-time rendering and 3-D content creation, the L40S takes advantage of 142 third-generation RT Cores to provide 212 teraflops of ray-tracing performance, which Nvidia said enables “immersive visual experiences and photorealistic content.”

The L40S is also a workhorse when it comes to engineering and scientific simulation applications, thanks to its 18,176 CUDA cores, which gives the GPU nearly five times better single-precision floating-point (FP32) performance than the A100 for “complex calculations and data-intensive analyses.”

The L40S will be available starting this fall in systems based on Nvidia’s OVX reference architecture from Asus, Dell Technologies, Gigabyte, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Supermicro and other vendors.