Supermicro believes that the new Xeon chips will allow partners to do more with entry level servers than they have in the past.
San Jose-based ODM Supermicro Computer has announced the release of its new portfolio of UP entry-class servers which are optimized for the new Intel Xeon E-2100 processors. As usual with Supermicro, they have a wide assortment of flavours available, to allow partners to easily provide more customized solutions to customers. They also believe that the enhancements with this generation of chip will allow customers to do more with their entry level servers than they have in the past.
Intel announced the launch of their new Xeon E-2100 processors, formerly code-named Coffee Lake, in July, with that initial release being around their workstation chips. The entry-level server version of the chip is being released today. This latest generation of the Intel UP platform brings 6 cores and 12 threads of compute into the entry-class of processors, significantly expanding their capabilities, and their use cases. Together with new features like Intel Cache Acceleration Software and Intel Optane memory support, they ramp up performance 37 per cent over the prior generation of processor, the E3.
Supermicro differentiates itself from competitors in the server space like Dell EMC and HPE by their emphasis on customization, being able to offer a much broader range of options with building block components, to provide custom solutions at an off-the rack price. Accordingly, they are making a broad portfolio of new servers available, from 1U units with different flavours of motherboards, I/O and power, through 1U WIO SuperServers adding flexible storage options, and mid-tower or mini-tower systems for small business servers and storage applications, up to high-density multi-node 3U MicroBlade and MicroCloud systems, for data centres and cloud or web hosting respectively.
“We want to be able to offer the full breadth of platforms in the entry class servers in particular, be it in a blade, embedded or a rack mount server,” said Michael McNerney, Supermicro’s Vice President of Software Solutions and Network Security. “This ability to differentiate is likely even more important at the entry level, where the boxes go into a large number of different use cases, from a factory floor to a highly dense Web cluster. We see these form factors as critical to the differentiation. It also gives channel partners a toolkit to offer a solution specifically optimized for individual customers, to innovate, drive efficiency and build solutions rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach.”
The improvements over the prior generation of servers, which include 50 per cent more processor cores, the doubling of memory footprint, improved energy efficiency, faster I/O bandwidth, and increased security and reliability, are likely to open up new use cases for these entry level servers.
“There is some interesting functionality with things like Apache Pass [the Optane memory support] in particular, that could drive some interesting decisions in terms of doing more with this class of system,” McNerney said. “The new capabilities also provide new opportunities to look at what the right size for specific workloads, since we are focused on workload optimized systems, which is why we have so many different form factors. The ability to get the same performance with a less expensive product will come into play here with some customers.”
The new Supermicro servers are available now.
