Codenamed Ponte Vecchio, Intel’s highest performing Data Center GPU Max computing GPUs come in the form of OAM modules for blade machines for supercomputing. The company also has a discreet Data Center GPU Max add-on card for mainstream servers and workstations. These cards follow the latest fashion and are equipped with a 12VHPWR power connector.
Intel’s Data Center GPU Max 1100 features a reduced single-stack version of Intel’s Ponte Vecchio processor, featuring 448 512-bit vector engines, 448 4096-bit matrix engines, 56 ray tracing cores, and It has 56 Xe-HPC compute cores with 48GB. of HBM2E memory. The unit draws up to 300W of power. After all, graphics cards rely on an auxiliary PCIe 5.0 power connector. intel video.
Nvidia is the first company to use the 12VHPWR power connector in its consumer graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090. There have been 20 user reports of melted 16 pin power adapters and 3 similar cases of melted native 16 pin power connectors. Andreas Schilling of HardwareLuxx.de jokingly murmured“Let’s hope the data center experts are familiar with how to properly insert the 12VHPWR adapter.” Therefore, there is no definitive answer.
image 1 of Four
I’m not sure why Intel used the 12VHPWR power connector on the 300W card. Still, it’s possible that the company has decided to go with the PCIe Gen5 solution primarily for the parts used in the Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids servers designed to the new standard.
Intel’s add-in Data Center GPU Max 1100 board is used by mainstream servers and individuals who need very high AI (i.e. INT8, BF16, FP16, etc.) and HPC (i.e. FP64) performance for artificial intelligence Designed for both workstations. / Deep learning and various compute-intensive and simulation workloads. Using the Xe-Link interconnect, the cards can operate as single boards, in pairs, or in 4-way configurations. Installing four such accelerators in a PC consumes 1,200W of power. However, such a system is unsafe due to the presence of four potentially dangerous power connectors.
Currently, only Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 (coming November 16th) use the 12VHPWR power connector. Both AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 series and Intel’s Arc Alchemist graphics cards use a standard 8-pin PCIe auxiliary power connector.
