Kentino AI Node A100 — 8× NVIDIA A100 SXM4 80 GB, 640 GB HBM2e

An 8-GPU node carrying eight NVIDIA A100 SXM4 80 GB modules on an NVLink/NVSwitch baseboard: 640 GB of HBM2e at 2.04 TB/s per GPU with 600 GB/s any-to-any GPU bandwidth. Ampere is two generations back, and for a large class of work that is exactly why you want it - the same 640 GB pool as a Hopper H100 node, at substantially less money and 2.4 kW less heat. If your models run at bf16 or Q4 and you are not going to use fp8, you should not be paying for it.

Hardware

What it runs

640 GB at bf16 and Q4 covers most production serving and fine-tuning. Estimates are for this 8-GPU configuration with tensor parallelism.

Throughput figures are estimates derived from published vendor specifications and community benchmarks for this GPU generation, not measurements taken on this exact configuration. We will give you measured numbers for your model and context length before you commit.

Power and cooling

Roughly 4.3 kW sustained: 3.2 kW of GPU plus CPU, fans and storage. That is 2.4 kW less than a Hopper node and it is the practical selling point - 4.3 kW fits a conventional datacentre rack with front-to-back airflow and no aisle containment retrofit. Over three years at EU industrial electricity rates the difference against an H100 node is a real line in the TCO, not a rounding error.

What you give up, and export control

No fp8. Ampere predates the format. Models shipping fp8-native - the DeepSeek-V3 family, Hunyuan-Large - run here at bf16 or Q4 instead, which costs VRAM and throughput. If your roadmap is fp8 checkpoints, buy Hopper. This is the single real limitation of the tier and we would rather you hear it now.

Export control. A100 80 GB is above the Advanced Computing Item thresholds (ECCN 3A090.a), so it needs the same KYC form and End User Certificate as the Hopper nodes.

Late-life hardware. Ampere is near end of channel life. Warranty horizon and spares availability are shorter than on current generation, and we will tell you exactly what we can commit to in writing before you order.

What you get from Kentino

Kentino supplies, configures and supports this node as a complete deployment: rack and power design against your site's actual feed, front-to-back airflow sizing for 24/7 operation, OS and driver stack (Ubuntu with pinned NVIDIA driver, CUDA, container toolkit), the inference or training stack of your choice, burn-in with a written report, EU-based logistics and warranty.

We also handle the export paperwork with you rather than mailing you a form and hoping. That part takes longer than the hardware and is where most first-time buyers of this class of machine get stuck.

Price shown is EUR excluding VAT, EXW Prague (Incoterms 2020). Collection, freight, insurance and any destination import duties are for the buyer’s account. Lead time on request.

Tell us the models you need to serve and we will tell you honestly whether this node or a Hopper node is the right purchase - the answer is genuinely sometimes this one.