A few STH readers may have seen that I did a series of videos for Supermicro’s 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable (codenamed “Sapphire Rapids”) launch. There were three videos that we recorded in Supermicro’s factory going through the portfolio of servers. I also told Supermicro that I wanted to do a piece explaining all of the new features of servers in a rapid-fire video.
Next-gen Servers and Next-Gen Features in Intel and Supermicro Servers
This series of videos, Supermicro wanted for its next-gen server launch. So we filmed a number of Supermicro X13 videos that Supermicro sponsored for its X13 launch. I asked to do something a bit different for this one as I wanted it to be a bit more about technology. If you saw this Tweet in December, you may have had an inside look.
What is happening today? @intel @Supermicro_SMCI pic.twitter.com/QwGagmYpm2
— STH (@ServeTheHome) December 9, 2022
Supermicro brought its X13 server trailer that it uses to show off its products at events and parked it in front of Intel’s Robert Noyce Building (RNB), just in front of the company’s headquarters lobby door. Behind me, you can see the Supermicro trailer, the old Intel logo that many still take photos of, and then the RNB’s lobby entrance just behind the Intel logo. It was quite fun as we had folks from Intel and Intel’s customers stopping by, and I was showing off the new servers and technology.
Here is the video. In the video, we show off the full set of new features in this generation from new CPUs, DDR5, PCIe Gen5, CXL, and new accelerators, both on-chip, and we even show GPUs like the Intel GPU Max 1100 series. There is even a cameo of a new DPU and 400GbE NIC.
The entire process was very fun, and while we were filming this, I had the opportunity to show off the new servers to those folks walking into and out of Intel’s lobby.
Final Words
The original idea with this video is I wanted something short that covers all of the new technology found in newer servers. My thought was this is a great video to send to folks to explain why new servers are fundamentally very different than previous generation parts, especially since a lot of the market is accustomed to slower innovation periods in the 2012-2021 era. I just wanted to say thank you to Supermicro and Intel for supporting this idea.
