Question

A research lab is expanding its on-premises cluster from a single 8-GPU server to a multi-node system and wants to run a single large training job that spans 32 GPUs across four servers. During planning, an engineer asks how the collective communication (e.g., all-reduce during gradient synchronization) will behave across this configuration. Which statement correctly describes the interconnect roles in this scale-out design?

Accepted Answer

NVLink/NVSwitch provides high-bandwidth GPU-to-GPU communication within each server, while a high-speed fabric such as InfiniBand carries traffic between the four servers.

Answer

InfiniBand handles GPU-to-GPU communication inside each server, while NVLink connects the separate servers together across the rack.

Answer

PCIe alone is sufficient for both intra-server and inter-server GPU communication, so no specialized fabric is required.

Answer

NVLink extends natively across all four servers, so a separate inter-node network fabric is unnecessary for the 32-GPU job.