At SC22, we saw a number of new AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa and 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” servers on the show floor. We covered these in a recent video but wanted to have a written piece to go along with that.
ASUS AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa Servers at SC22
If you want to see the servers in video form with some commentary, check out the video below:
They are one of the first products featured at 02:39 in that video.
ASUS Liquid Cooling at SC22
ASUS had a duo of liquid cooled servers at SC22. One of them was teh ASUS RS720Q-E11-RS8U. This is a next generation 4th Gen Xeon/ LGA4677 platform with the Intel C741 chipset.
Each node in the 2U 4-node (2U4N) platform has eight DDR5 DIMMs and can support up to 350W CPUs when liquid cooled.
If you saw our SC21 liquid cooling video, you will recognize the Staubli connectors.
For the AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa, we have the ASUS RS720QA-E12-RS8U. This is a 2U4N AMD solution. We can see the two sockets and the 12 DIMMs per socket on this platform.
Something that is really interesting here is that these are Delta liquid cooling cold plates.
Liquid cooling is going to be a bigger theme in this generation. Another theme is going to GPUs and accelerated computing.
ASUS GPU Platforms at SC22
ASUS had a number of GPU computing platforms at SC22. We are just going to cover a few of them. Perhaps the biggest one is the ASUS ESC N8-E11. This is the ASUS-NVIDIA Delta-Next platform with dual Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids CPUs and 8x NVIDIA H100 GPUs and a NVSwitch fabric. It also has a very cool looking faceplate.
The ASUS ESC800-E11 is a PCIe GPU version.
Here we can see a NVIDIA H100 PCIe GPU installed and a ConnectX-7 NIC. Perhaps one of the most interesting parts about this Intel Sapphire Rapids platform is the cabled PCIe connections. Often we have seen the PCIe x16 accelerator board with onboard PCIe switches. In this server, there are cabled connections to each slot.
For those that want AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa, there is the ASUS ESC8000A-E12P. This is effectively the AMD version of that system.
ASUS had this equipped with the AMD Instinct MI200 PCIe GPUs.
ASUS had a single socket AMD EPYC Genoa GPU platform. The 2U ASUS ESC4000A-E12 is a 2U single socket 4x PCIe GPU platform.
Here we can see this with NVIDIA GPUs installed. Something interesting is that the PSUs are at the front, but there are power connections on the rear for those that only have rear power.
ASUS also had a number of edge and standard servers on the show floor.
ASUS Intel Sapphire Rapids Edge and Standard Servers at SC22
One of the more interesting platforms was the ASUS ESG500-E11. This is a short-depth edge platform.
One can see the 8x DDR5 DIMM slots alongside the Sapphire Rapids CPU and even room for multiple PCIe cards.
There was also a much larger dual socket ASUS RS700-E11-RS4U that is a more standard 1U machine.
This larger form factor allows for PCIe expansion while also allowing for dual Sapphire Rapids Xeons and a full 16x DDR5 DIMM configuration.
We expect to see more of these at the January 10, 2023 next-gen Xeon launch.
Final Words
This was a fun SC22 since we had the launched, but hard to get AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa systems along with the soon-to-be-launched 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids servers. It was great to see both side-by-side in the ASUS booth. Expect more ASUS server reviews very soon from STH.
