Dell Discloses Monster 20-petaFLOPS Desktop Built On Nvidia's GB300 Superchip

GTC The age of the 20-petaFLOPS desktop is upon us as Dell announced a machine capable of achieving that massive processing power today at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley.

The Pro Max with GB300 takes its name from the GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip Nvidia announced earlier in the day. The GB300 features an Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPU with next-generation Tensor Cores and FP4 precision. It includes 784 GB of unified system memory – 288 GB of HBM3e in the GPU and 496 GB of LPDDR5X for the CPU – optimized for large-scale training and inference workloads. The GB300 connects via NVLink-C2C, ensuring high-speed, CPU-GPU coherent memory access.

The workstation, when or if it eventually arrives, is set to include the Nvidia ConnectX-8 SuperNIC, optimized for AI computing workloads. It supports networking speeds of up to 800 Gbps, enabling ultra-fast interconnects for distributed AI training and data transfers.

Kevin Terwilliger, Dell VP and general manager for commercial, consumer, and gaming PCs, told The Register the machine "will make it much easier for developers to prototype, to test, and even scale their models into production environments."

The VP thinks developers will use it to run large-scale training and inferencing workloads as they want to work on AI models at a scale typically deployed to servers.

20-petaFLOPS desktops are therefore needed. Before you ask, the Pro Max with GB300 should be able to run Doom as it can ship with either Ubuntu or Nvidia's Base OS.

Dell Pro Max with GB300 workstation – click to enlarge

Dell also talked up a forthcoming mini-workstation powered by the petaFLOPS-packing GB10 Grace-Blackwell desktop processor.

We await news of pricing and shipping dates for both models, and details of their probably formidable I/O and storage options.

Servers follow suit

As you'd expect, Dell has also made sure its servers can use Nvidia's newly announced Blackwell Ultra silicon. The firm's PowerEdge servers can house the B300 NVL16, GB300 NVL72, and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition units. The B300 NVL16 and GB300 NVL72 feature Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra GPUs, using NVLink-C2C for high-bandwidth interconnectivity. The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition is designed for professional visualization and AI workloads, offering enhanced memory bandwidth and performance for enterprise AI applications.

Perhaps more interesting is the PowerEdge XE8712, 36 of which can be stacked in an Open Rack v3, accommodating up to 144 GB200 NVL4 accelerators. Dell says its Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) will keep them all cool and support up to 264 kW of power per rack.

We're told the machines will come in handy for scientific research, modeling financial markets, conducting genomic sequencing, or inclusion in a Dell/Nvidia AI Factory – the term Jensen Huang's gang uses to describe hardware dedicated to AI workloads.

HPE has also made sure its ProLiant servers can handle Nvidia's latest. The company's Compute XD servers will support the HGX B300, while the DL384b Gen 12 machines handle the GB200 Grace Blackwell NVL4 Superchip.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL380a Gen 12 hardware will run the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition silicon.

• Nvidia's Vera Rubin CPU, GPU roadmap charts course for hot-hot-hot 600 kW racks
• Nvidia wants to put a GB300 Superchip on your desk with DGX Station, Spark PCs
• Nvidia punts silicon photonic switches to keep GPUs fed with data
• We heard you like HBM – Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra GPUs have 288 GB of it

Lenovo's pre-show announcements mention hardware that can run Nvidia's latest chips, but didn't specify any new models or which of its existing systems can handle Blackwell Ultra hardware.

The Chinese company instead emphasized how it has bundled its hardware into solutions for workloads including AI reasoning, agentic AI, and real-time video generation.

It's not alone in having built solutions and services around Nvidia's new toys. Dell and HPE have also assembled bundles and teams to help their customers build agents and implement other AI-infused applications.

Dell has even created its own AI coding assistant that runs on-prem for orgs that think their developers need a hand but don't want their code to get anywhere near a cloud or SaaS platform.

All three vendors' services are available now, even though we're told hardware hosting Nvidia products announced at GTC won't debut until the second quarter of 2025 – or even later in the year. ®