It’s only two years late, but the fourth generation of Xeon Scalable processors, aka Sapphire Rapids, is hits the ground continuouslywhere every major OEM offers new servers with the chips.
The fourthth The Gen Xeon Scalable is notable because it contains a number of special computing engines in addition to its x86 cores, and it also has lots of cores; up to 60. One of the special engines is for AI acceleration, as Intel is determined to make the CPU viable as an AI processor instead of GPUs. So not surprisingly, many of the new servers are built with AI processing in mind.
All the servers support the latest technologies found in 4th Gen Xeon Scalable: DDR5 memoryPCI Express 5 connections and CXL 1.1 memory pooling.
Here is the list.
Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies introduced a total of 13 PowerEdge servers covering enterprise data centers, large public clouds and edge locations in rack, tower and multi-node designs. They come with Dell Smart Flow, a new feature in the Dell Smart Cooling suite that increases airflow and reduces fan power by up to 52% compared to previous generation servers.
Dell claims its PowerEdge R760 delivers up to 2.9x greater AI inference with the new Xeon Scalable processors, while the PowerEdge R760 also offers up to 20% increase in VDI users and over 50% more SAP Sales & Distribution users on one server compared to the previous generation.
In addition to updating existing lines, Dell is introducing the PowerEdge HS5610 and HS5620 servers, providing optimized solutions tailored for cloud service providers managing large, multi-vendor data centers. They are two-socket servers that come in both 1U and 2U form factors.
All servers come with updated Dell CloudIQ, which combines proactive monitoring, machine learning and predictive analytics while offering a comprehensive view of servers wherever they are located. They also come with Dell ProDeploy services for rapid hardware deployment and Dell iDRAC9 for simplified deployment and diagnostics.
HP Enterprise
HPE announced a major update to its Alletra line of enterprise storage products. Alletra is a rebranding of its Primera and Nimble storage arrays with a storage-as-a-service model for the 9000 and 6000 series respectively. The Alletra 4000 is a rebranding of its Apollo 4000 data storage server line with two new products: the Alletra 4110 and 4120.
The Alletra 4110 is a 1U, dual CPU server with up to 3 TB DDR5 memory and up to 307.2 TB capacity with 20x 15.36 TB SSDs. The Alletra 4120 is a higher capacity hybrid NVMe/HDD 2U chassis with up to 6 TB of DDR5 memory. It supports a mix of NVMe, SAS or SATA drives.
Both systems are aimed at large enterprises with a range of data-centric workloads from data lakes and archives to high-throughput and in-place analytics and AI/ML, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and cache-intensive workloads such as databases.
Lenovo
One thing about Lenovo, they do things in a big way. The company introduced 25 new ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile servers and hyperconverged solutions running the new Xeon Scalable processors. Sold under the banner of the Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 portfolio, they span applications such as in-memory and large transactional databases, real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized and containerized workloads.
Some systems are updates to existing lines, while others are new, such as the ThinkSystem SR850 V3, a four-socket 2U design for high-intensity workloads. The new Lenovo ThinkAgile V3 HX, MX and VX hyperconverged infrastructure products come with Microsoft, Nutanix and VMware software pre-installed for an HCI environment.
Some systems are cooled by the fifth generation of Lenovo’s Neptune direct water cooling technology, which it claims can reduce power consumption by up to 40% compared to using fans. Lenovo also said select models support liquid cooling for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), an industry first. The HBM sits next to the CPU or GPU and air cooling them is a challenge. But Lenovo says it will support Intel’s Xeon Max Series CPUs and Intel’s GPU Max, which are yet to ship.
Super micro
Supermicro launched more than 50 servers and storage systems across 15 families, collectively known as the X13. They cover the spectrum of AI, HPC, cloud computing, media, enterprise and 5G/telco/edge workloads. They range from single-socket to eight-socket designs and support GPU cards along with the CPU.
Among the families:
- SuperBlade (high-performance, density-optimized blades),
- Hyper (high-performance rack-mounted servers),
- BigTwin (for cloud, storage and media workloads),
- GrandTwin (a completely new architecture for a processor performance)
- SuperEdge (single processor nodes in a 2U, short depth edge form factor)
- CloudDC (intended for cloud environments)
- Petascale Storage (all-flash NVMe storage systems)
Inspur Information
Chinese ODM Inspur Information, popular among hyperscale cloud providers, announced that its G7 server platform would support Xeon Scalable processors with a total of 16 different types of servers. Inspur said performance is up to 61% faster and power consumption is up to 30% less compared to the previous generation of Intel-based products.
The servers are designed around a variety of use cases, such as general computing, critical computing and artificial intelligence. The G7 design is focused on green energy with both cold plate and immersion cooling systems. Inspur also claims that its intelligent fault diagnosis has an accuracy of up to 95%.
The G7 server family ranges from the high-end TS860G7 with eight sockets in a 6U space and 128 DIMM slots in DDR5 memory to the NF5180G7 general-purpose 1U rack server that supports immersion. Other servers come in two- and four-socket designs.
There is also the NF5266G7 high-density storage server with a three-tier storage architecture in a 2U space. Inspur says its computing performance is up to 60% faster than the previous generation.
Giga Computing
Giga Computing, the company spin-off by consumer component manufacturer Gigabyte Computing, announced servers and server motherboards based on the 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor as well as the Intel Xeon Max series.
Giga targets artificial intelligence, cloud computing, advanced analytics, HPC and network and storage applications. Giga Computing has 14 new series of servers with a total of 78 configurations for customers to choose from.
The new lines include:
- Single and double socket M-Series motherboards
- The R-series 1U and 2U rack-mounted servers
- G Series GPU servers with thermal and mechanical design for the hotter GPU and built for HPC, AI and high-performance parallel processing.
- H series high density 2U 4-node servers
- E-series edge servers with short form factors for small settings
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