The NVIDIA A40 is an Ampere architecture datacenter GPU optimized for visual computing, rendering, and AI inference workloads. Announced in October 2020, it uses the full GA102 die (also found in RTX A6000 and consumer RTX 3090) configured for datacenter deployment with enterprise features.
The A40 features 48GB of GDDR6 ECC memory with 696 GB/s bandwidth, providing substantial capacity for large visualization datasets and AI models. The GA102 die includes 10,752 CUDA cores, 336 Tensor Cores, and 84 RT (Ray Tracing) cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing for professional rendering.
Unlike the HBM-equipped A100, the A40 uses GDDR6 memory which provides higher capacity at lower cost per GB, making it cost-effective for workloads that don't require HBM bandwidth. The dual-slot PCIe Gen4 x16 form factor has a 300W TDP and supports passive cooling in properly ventilated server chassis.
The A40 supports NVIDIA Virtual GPU (vGPU) software for virtualized deployments, enabling multiple virtual machines to share a single GPU. Hardware video encode/decode engines (NVENC/NVDEC) support up to 8 simultaneous 4K video streams, making the A40 suitable for video transcoding, streaming, and video analytics applications.