In plain words: Two NVIDIA GPUs with different memory types were tested at various power limits, measuring how much power goes to memory versus computing during heavy math and heavy memory tasks. The H100 was slightly better for math-heavy work, while the H200 won on memory-heavy work.
Abstract · Architectural Trade-offs in the Energy-Efficient Era: A Comparative Study of power-capping NVIDIA H100 and H200
Modern NVIDIA GPUs like the H100 (HBM2e) and H200 (HBM3e) share similar compute characteristics but differ significantly in memory interface technology and bandwidth. By isolating memory bandwidth as a key variable, the power distribution between the memory and Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) changes notably between the two architectures. In the era of energy-efficient computing, analyzing how these hardware characteristics impact performance per watt is critical. This study investigates how the H100 and H200 manage memory power consumption at various power-cap levels. By a regression analysis, we study the memory power limit and uncover outliers consuming more memory power. To evaluate efficiency, we employ compute-bound (DGEMM) and memory-bound (TheBandwidthBenchmark) workloads, representing the two extremes of the Roof\-line model. Our observations indicate that across varying power caps, the H100 remains the slightly better choice for strictly compute-bound workloads, whereas the H200 demonstrates superior efficiency for memory-bound applications.
Aditya Ujeniya, Jan Eitzinger, Georg Hager, Gerhard Wellein
arXiv:2604.11391 · cs.PF · submitted Apr 13, 2026 · updated Jul 15, 2026
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