AI Infra Interviews logo
NVIDIA · GPU · reviewed 2026-09-12

NVIDIA A10

A 24 GB graphics-capable server GPU. It offers more memory than T4, without the HBM or switched links of A100.

Memory per accelerator
24 GB

GDDR6

Memory bandwidth
0.6 TB/s

Published peak, not measured application throughput

Remember this

AWS calls its G5 accelerator A10G. Treat that as a provider variant and use the G5 instance specifications, rather than silently relabelling a generic A10 datasheet.

When this is a sensible choice

Start here if…

A10 suits smaller inference services and mixed rendering/AI fleets. A 7B BF16 weight payload is about 14 GB, leaving part of the card for runtime and cache; the actual context budget still needs measurement.

Choose another configuration if…

Choose an HBM accelerator when weight reads or long-context capacity dominate. Do not spread a latency-sensitive model across several A10s solely because their total memory looks sufficient.

Specifications with their boundaries attached

Architecture
Ampere
Memory
24 GB GDDR6
Memory bandwidth
0.6 TB/s per accelerator
Peak compute
125 TFLOPS dense BF16/FP16; 250 with sparsity
Scale-up interconnect
PCIe only; no NVLink
Host attachment
PCIe 4.0 x16
Power
150 W
Partitioning
vGPU profiles; no MIG
Catalogue status
Documented product

Compute figures are theoretical peaks at the stated precision. Dense and structured-sparse rates must not be mixed. Bandwidth labelled bidirectional combines both directions. See the source documents.

Follow the bytes · conceptual topology

Three bandwidths, three different jobs

Local memory24 GB GDDR6
Compute enginesExecute kernels on these bytes
① Memory bandwidth: 0.6 TB/s
Accelerator AOwn local memory
Accelerator BOwn local memory
Scale-up: NVLink, Infinity Fabric or PCIe
PCIe only; no NVLink
Server AAccelerators + host
Server BAnother fabric domain
③ Scale-out: NICs + switches + placement
InfiniBand, RoCE, EFA or provider-specific transport
A 400 Gb/s NIC has a 50 GB/s raw line-rate equivalent before overhead. A 900 GB/s bidirectional NVLink figure counts traffic in both directions. Neither is the bandwidth at which a GPU reads its own HBM. This diagram explains the boundaries; it is not a wiring diagram for a particular cloud machine.

Where it appears in provider documentation

Documented configurations, checked September 12, 2026. Listing does not guarantee regional stock, quota, allocation size or an on-demand purchase.
Provider / machineNetwork scopeWhat changes the decision
AWS
G4dn / G5 / G6 / G6e
Depends on VM size; no NVLink assumptionRespectively T4, A10G, L4 and L40S. A10G is AWS’s A10-family device. Fractional and full GPU offerings are different products.
Azure
NCasT4_v3 / NVadsA10_v5
Size-dependent; inspect fractional GPU allocationT4 and A10 families respectively. The memory of a fractional GPU is smaller than a full card’s memory.
Lambda
On-demand GPU instances
Ordinary instance listing does not guarantee cluster fabricB200 and H100 SXM come in multiple GPU counts. H100 PCIe is separately listed: choose the full product name.

Model fit and software support

These publisher or serving-engine documents mention this hardware family. They have not been reproduced on our machines.

No model-specific recipe in our reviewed set certifies this exact hardware. The memory calculator can narrow candidates, but it cannot establish software support. Read the model register.

What is the memory floor?

Start with total parameters, then add the memory the workload needs. This arithmetic does not certify a serving configuration. All output sizes below are decimal GB.

Override device capacity with the memory exposed by your allocation, particularly for cloud B300 and partitioned devices. The starting 32 GB budget and 15% reserve are editable teaching assumptions. They are not measurements for the selected model. Mixed-precision tensors, quantization scales, vision encoders and draft models can increase the weight payload.

320 GB

Raw weights only
320B × 8 bits ÷ 8

20.4 GB

Budget per device
24 GB × (1 − 15%)

18 devices

Arithmetic lower bound
round up ((weights + 32) ÷ budget)

WeightsCache + runtimeRemaining budget

This assumes perfectly balanced sharding. A result of three does not prove that a three-device parallel layout is supported. Check layer/expert divisibility, actual allocatable memory, precision kernels and the fabric before renting.

320B is the model card’s total; 18B active is not its storage size. The vLLM recipe reports about 306 GiB for the native FP8 checkpoint. Hopper requires BF16 KV for this model; the documented ROCm path targets gfx950, not every Instinct GPU. Read the model source ↗

For full training, also budget gradients, optimizer states, activations and communication buffers. The inference weight estimate above is insufficient.

Tokens per second, TTFT and TPOT are not certified for this hardware in our reference. Use the benchmark checklist to compare an exact model, software revision and workload.

Nearby memory capacities, different tradeoffs

These are comparison candidates selected by memory capacity, not performance rankings or drop-in replacements.

NVIDIA L4

24 GB · 0.3 TB/s

A low-power 24 GB inference and media GPU. More compute does not imply more memory bandwidth: its published 300 GB/s is below A10.

NVIDIA A30

24 GB · 0.93 TB/s

A 24 GB HBM2 accelerator for shared enterprise servers. It has more memory bandwidth than L4, but an older compute architecture.

NVIDIA T4

16 GB · 0.32 TB/s

A small inference GPU for a model that already fits. Its 16 GB capacity is usually the first limit a new LLM user encounters.

Sources and review scope

Manufacturer and cloud documentation checked 2026-09-12. We reviewed specifications and the stated product boundaries; we did not run training or serving benchmarks on this device. Cloud memory and availability can differ by configuration.

  1. NVIDIA A10 datasheet · checked 2026-09-12

Cite this reference

AI Infra Interviews. NVIDIA A10: specifications and workload fit. Reviewed . https://aiinfrainterviews.com/hardware/a10

Include your access date when citing a changing specification. Link to the specification section for hardware figures or the explanation for a sizing or workload decision.

Research method and limits

We compile manufacturer specifications, cloud documentation, model cards and serving recipes. The reference preserves source units and distinguishes individual devices from nodes and racks. Conflicting figures and unknown fields remain labelled.

Our contribution is the comparison, unit reconciliation, worked arithmetic and workload explanation. Published peaks are vendor specifications. Calculator results are estimates under the displayed assumptions. Neither is a measurement from our own accelerator lab.

For a manufacturer’s specification, consult the original source documents. Cite our page when using its analysis, and retain primary-source attribution for underlying figures. This curated reference does not establish market share, live availability or a universal performance ranking.

Found a discrepancy? Send a correction with the page URL, exact variant, disputed figure and supporting primary document.