GPU × use-case guide · Embeddings

Is the H100 NVL a good GPU for embeddings?

The H100 NVL is a hopper NVIDIA GPU with 94 GB HBM3 (3938 GB/s), 835 TFLOPS BF16 / 1671 TFLOPS FP8, and a 400 W TDP. Embeddings workloads care most about maximum batch throughput on small encoder models — pure tokens-per-dollar. Here's how the H100 NVL measures up.

What models fit on a single H100 NVL?

Weights only, reserving ~25% of the 94 GB for KV cache, activations and fragmentation. ✓ = fits on one card.

Largest single-card fit: Gemma 2 27B at BF16, Llama 3.3 70B at FP8, Qwen 2.5 72B at INT4. Bigger models need tensor-parallel across 8 cards.

H100 NVL for embeddings, specifically

Embeddings is throughput-bound rather than VRAM-bound, so the H100 NVL's 3938 GB/s of bandwidth and 835 TFLOPS matter more than raw capacity. Because it runs offline, batch aggressively to push tokens-per-dollar down. Size it precisely on the calculator.

H100 NVL pricing across providers

Verdict

With 94 GB, the H100 NVL is a data-center-class card that comfortably handles embeddings for models up to Gemma 2 27B at full precision on a single card — a strong pick if your budget supports ~$4.1/hr.