The market is paying attention with the launch of Intel's latest Sapphire Rapids for data centers. Supermicro Computer has moved to gain a head start in the market by rapidly unveiling its latest Sapphire Rapids-based server and storage portfolio.

Super Micro Computer (hereinafter Super Micro) announced on the 12th that it has launched the industry's most extensive portfolio of Tier 1 servers and storage, along with more than 15 performance-optimized systems focused on AI, HPC, cloud, media, enterprise, and 5G, telco, and edge workloads.

The new product is equipped with the new 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (Sapphire Rapids) and has been enhanced in terms of performance, speed, and eco-friendliness. Supermicro emphasized that it offers up to 60% improved workload optimization performance, enhanced security (Hardware Root of Trace (HRoT) certified), and ease of management, and is faster with integrated AI, storage, and cloud acceleration, and is more eco-friendly by reducing environmental impact and operating costs with high-temperature environments and water cooling options.

Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro, explained, “Supermicro’s extensive portfolio, consisting of over 15 X13 server families, is designed to be optimized for performance, functionality, and cost for specific data center and intelligent edge workloads. Supermicro systems equipped with the new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors can achieve unprecedented results in both overall performance and performance per watt.”

Not only the processor but also all major subsystems have been significantly upgraded. Memory performance has been improved by up to twofold via DDR5, and I/O bandwidth has been doubled with 80 PCIe Gen 5 I/O lanes to support high-performance accelerator cards. It also features 400Gbps networking, manageability, and security. Power and cooling capabilities have also been expanded to support 350W CPUs and GPUs up to 700W, and support for both high-temperature operation and liquid cooling has been added to reduce environmental impact and improve TCO.

The Accelerator Engine in the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors increases efficiency and reduces CPU load caused by many critical workloads in today's data centers. The 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors include Intel Advanced Matrix Extension (AMX) to improve deep learning inference and training performance, Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) to reduce CPU overhead in storage, networking, and data processing-intensive tasks, Intel Quick Assist Technology (QAT) for hardware offloading of well-known encryption and data compression and decompression algorithms, and Intel AVX for vRAN to improve the capacity of vRAN workloads and reduce power consumption.

In addition, Supermicro servers will support the new Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (Ponte Vecchio) across a wide range of server families. The Intel Data Center GPU Max Series includes up to 128 Xe-HPC cores and can accelerate AI, HPC, and visualization workloads.

Lisa Spelman, Intel Vice President and General Manager of Xeon Products, stated, “The new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are designed to provide a powerful data infrastructure from the cloud to the network and intelligent edge, and to establish a new standard for data center architecture. Intel has collaborated with Supermicro to integrate Intel processors into Supermicro systems for over 30 years, and we expect Supermicro’s industry-leading architecture and system design to help the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors reach their full potential.”