NVIDIA's upcoming Vera Rubin Ultra systems are in a state of flux at the moment, with persistent rumors pointing to a potential HBM de-spec, where the GPU giant might choose to lower the quantum of HBM4E within each GPU to preserve its margins.
Well, the Bank of America (BofA) is out with an insightful report today, quantifying the dynamics between HBM4E and LPDDR5X-based SOCAMM2 modules within NVIDIA's upcoming Vera Rubin Ultra-based Kyber racks.
Currently, each base Rubin GPU is equipped with 288 GB of HBM4 across 8 stacks , delivering a bandwidth of of up to 22 TB/s per GPU. At the same time, the Vera CPU abandons standard server RDIMMs in favor of LPDDR5X-based SOCAMM2 modules, which use a compression connector that sits flat against the motherboard, shortening electrical traces to give LPDDR5X the signal integrity and low latency required for data centers. Each Vera CPU features 8 SOCAMM2 slots, which equates to a theoretical memory capacity of 1.5 TB of LPDDR5X per CPU (192GB modules).
Now, Bank of America has just published a new report, detailing that HBM4E within Rubin costs $19.76 per GB . What's more, each 144-GPU Kyber rack will sport 216TB of LPDDR5X that costs around $2.8 million, and above the $2.5 million bill for 124.4TB of HBM4E. In total, each Kyber rack will cost $41.6 million.
Meanwhile, as per a related report from UBS , each Rubin GPU within the Vera Rubin superchip configuration costs an estimated $9,247, which includes HBM4, packaging, interposer, and peripheral components. On the other hand, each Vera CPU costs around $20,059, including the SOCAMM2 LPDDR5X, and an additional $350 for other board components. Around half of the cost of the GPU and nearly all of the cost of the CPU (costs only $704 after you strip out memory) consists of DRAM though!
On Blackwell servers, the Grace CPUs were equipped with 480 GB of memory, and Blackwell GPUs offered 192 GB of HBM3E (GB200) and up to 288 GB of HBM3E (GB300). The total memory pool on Vera Rubin racks, though, has swelled to 74.7 TB (HBM4 + SOCAMM2). For Kyber racks, this pool balloons to a whopping 340.4TB!
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