NVIDIA A100 in Dubai: The Server, Power and Export Questions to Settle First
An NVIDIA A100 is a data centre GPU, and buying one in Dubai is really three decisions: which A100, which server will cool and power it, and whether US export rules require paperwork for your company. The PCIe A100 has no fans of its own, so it only runs inside a server built to push air through it. Settle those three points and the purchase is routine. Skip them and you can end up with a card that has nowhere to go.
Codeeo Tech lists the A100 40 GB and the A100 80 GB, alongside servers from Dell, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro. The rest of this page covers what to check before asking for a quote on either.
Which NVIDIA A100 you are buying
The A100 ships in a PCIe card and in an SXM module that only fits NVIDIA HGX and DGX baseboards. A business adding GPUs to a standard rack server wants PCIe. The figures below come from NVIDIA's A100 product page and its A100 40 GB PCIe product brief, PB-10137-001 version 03 dated September 2020, both read on 14 October 2026.
| Specification | A100 40 GB PCIe | A100 80 GB PCIe | A100 80 GB SXM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory | 40 GB HBM2 | 80 GB HBM2e | 80 GB HBM2e |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,555 GB/s | 1,935 GB/s | 2,039 GB/s |
| Maximum power | 250 W | 300 W | 400 W |
| Multi-Instance GPU | Up to 7 instances | Up to 7 at 10 GB | Up to 7 at 10 GB |
| GPU to GPU link | NVLink bridge, 2 cards | NVLink bridge, 2 cards, 600 GB/s | NVLink, 600 GB/s |
NVIDIA lists 9.7 teraflops of FP64, 19.5 teraflops of FP64 Tensor Core and 312 teraflops of FP16 Tensor Core for the 80 GB models, doubling to 624 with sparsity. Those double precision figures are the reason the A100 is still specified for engineering and scientific clusters years after newer chips arrived.
40 GB or 80 GB
The choice is mostly arithmetic. A 13 billion parameter model at 16 bits needs about 26 GB for its weights and fits on a 40 GB card. A 30 billion parameter model at 16 bits needs about 60 GB and fits only on the 80 GB card. The 80 GB PCIe card also has about 24 percent more bandwidth, 1,935 against 1,555 GB/s, for 50 W more power.
The A100 PCIe has no fans
NVIDIA's product brief says the A100 PCIe uses a passive heat sink and requires system airflow to stay within its thermal limits. It is a full-height, full-length 10.5 inch dual-slot card weighing 1,240 g, with a heat sink that accepts airflow in either direction across the card. Put it in a tower workstation without directed airflow and it will throttle or shut down. It belongs in a server whose fans were specified for it.
The brief rates the card for an ambient operating temperature between 0 and 50 °C, with humidity between 5 and 95 percent. In a Dubai comms room that loses cooling on an August afternoon, the air at the server inlet is what that 50 °C limit is measured against, and the cooling notes in our guide to Dubai summer conditions apply directly.
The power connector catches people out
The A100 40 GB PCIe takes one CPU 8-pin auxiliary power connector, the EPS style lead, not the PCIe 8-pin that a graphics card normally uses. NVIDIA's brief lists a CPU 8-pin to PCIe 8-pin adapter as the alternative. A server that was not ordered as GPU-ready often has neither the right cable nor a power supply with the 250 W to 300 W of headroom per card, so the server specification matters as much as the GPU.
Choose the server before the card
NVIDIA runs an NVIDIA-Certified Systems programme in which partner servers pass functional, performance and security tests, including single-GPU, multi-GPU and multi-node runs, and it publishes a Qualified System Catalog of servers that have passed thermal, mechanical, power and signal checks. Dell, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro are among the server makers it names.
That gives a Dubai buyer a short checklist. Find the exact server model and configuration in NVIDIA's catalog for the A100 variant you want. Confirm the GPU count it supports, the riser and slot layout, the fan kit and the power supply rating. Only then order the cards. The Supermicro and Dell EMC server ranges are where most single and dual A100 builds start, and our server buying guide for the UAE covers the rest of the specification.
US export rules and an A100 order in the UAE
The A100 has been inside US export controls since NVIDIA disclosed, in a Form 8-K reporting an event on 26 August 2022, that the US government had imposed a licence requirement on future A100 exports to China, including Hong Kong, and to Russia. The UAE position changed this year.
A US Commerce Department rule published in the Federal Register on 14 July 2026 as document 2026-14132, and effective from 10 July 2026, moved the UAE out of Country Groups D:3 and D:4 and into Country Group A:5. The same rule maintains licence requirements for advanced computing items destined to or within the UAE, except for UAE government agencies and the approved commercial and US-headquartered entities listed in supplement no. 8 to part 740 of the Export Administration Regulations. Other UAE commercial entities may ask BIS for an advisory opinion under section 748.3(c) to be added.
Whether a given A100 shipment needs a licence depends on its export classification and on every party in the chain, and that determination belongs to the exporter and its counsel. For a buyer it has two practical effects:
- Expect to be asked who the end user is and what the cards will be used for. A supplier that asks nothing is not doing you a favour.
- Build the paperwork into the timeline. A purchase that needs an export authorisation cannot be rushed by the buyer or the supplier.
When an A100 is the wrong answer
- A single developer at a desk. A passively cooled card needs a server. A workstation card or a desktop system such as the one in our DGX Spark note fits that job better.
- Rendering and visualisation. The A100 is a compute accelerator for data centre servers. The professional RTX cards are the ones built to drive a designer's screens.
- No server room. If the cards would go into a cupboard without dedicated cooling, fix the room first.
What to send with an A100 enquiry
- A100 40 GB or 80 GB, PCIe or SXM, and how many.
- The server model it will go into, or the workload if the server is still open.
- The end user's company name and the intended use, for the export questions above.
- The site: comms room, data centre or colocation, and its cooling.
Every item on the Codeeo Tech store is priced through Add to Quote. Send those details through the contact form and the reply can address the server, the power and the paperwork together.
Cover photo: Le Centre Datarmor, les coulisses (Ifremer 00957-106840 - 54949) by Gregory Rocher (IFREMER Centre Bretagne, IRSI-RIC - ZI de la Pointe du Diable - CS 10070 - 29280 Plouzané, France), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
