Tech 10: New Generation Servers Front And Center

Wide Server Support For "Skylake Purley" Intel Xeon Scalable Processor

The new Intel Xeon Scalable Platform processors, also known as "Skylake," are at the heart of a wide range of new servers destined for enterprise, SMB, and cloud data centers thanks to their new mesh-based "Purley" architecture to reduce latency at high core counts.

At the high end of the family, the new processors offer 28 cores per socket, and support up to eight sockets with up to three Intel UPI (UltraPath Interconnect) uplinks. They also support up to 1.5 TBs of 2666-MHz DDR4 memory. Options for the processors included the proprietary Intel Omni-Path Architecture fabric for high-performance and low-latency applications, along with high-performance Intel Optane SSDs based on the 3D XPoint memory technology jointly developed by Intel and Micron Technology.

CRN has collected information on 10 of the earliest server families to feature the new processors.

Amax Matrix On-Premise GPU Cloud

System builder Amax's Matrix platform for artificial intelligence development and deployment includes such key artificial intelligence components as deep learning frameworks and GPU virtualization technology. Amax said Skylake-based Matrix can pull the latest containers into clusters with a single command without disrupting running workloads, and are fully integrated with Jupyter Notebook to create interactive workspaces.

Cisco Unified Computing System M5

Cisco said its new Skylake-based Cisco UCS M5 servers boost performance by up to 86 percent over previous generations. The M5 family includes the half-width B200 M5 blade server, the B480 M5 full-width blade server, the C240 M5 two-socket rack server, the C240 M5 storage-optimized and I/O-optimized rack server; and the C480 modular rack server. They include Cisco UCS Director 6.5 for automation in FlexPod converged infrastructure and Cisco HyperFlex hyper-converged infrastructure environments.

Dell EMC Poweredge 14th Generation Servers

Dell EMC will soon ship its new PowerEdge 14th generation server family. Models include the 1U, two-socket PowerEdge R640 for dense scale-out computing and storage; the 2U, two-socket PowerEdge R740 with balanced storage and application acceleration; the 2U, two-socket PowerEdge R740XD storage-optimized system; the 3U, four-socket PowerEdge R940 mission-critical server; the PowerEdge M640 and FC640 modular servers and the 2U, eight-socket PowerEdge C6420 performance server. The servers are optimized for NVMe-based storage.

HPE Proliant Gen10, Synergy Gen10

HPE said its new Skylake-based ProLiant Gen10 Servers and HPE Synergy Gen10 compute modules are the first industry-standard servers with built-in silicon-based security to address firmware attacks. This includes security designed directly into a chip to create an immutable fingerprint to prevent unauthorized booting. HPE isalso providing new management software including HPE Flexible Capacity and HPE Capacity Care Service to let companies pay based on server utilization.

Lenovo ThinkSystem

Lenovo's new ThinkSystem portfolio, based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors, includes 14 configurable servers across rack and tower, mission-critical, dense and blade platforms. The company is aiming them at such workloads as real-time analytics, cloud, high-performance computing and software-defined architectures.

Nor-Tech Voyageur

Nor-Tech introduced several new Skylake-based HPC offerings based on its new Voyageur servers and Voyageur clusters. Nor-Tech said the new Voyageur Skylake Clusters feature six 2.5-inch hot-swap drive bays per node, up to 2 TB of DDR4-2666 memory in 16 DIMM slots, two PCIe slots and an optional NVMe slot, and either Intel's Omni-Path fabric or Mellanox FDR InfiniBand.

Quanta Second-Generation Servers

Quanta Cloud Technology introduced four new Skylake-based servers. They include the QuantaGrid D52B-1U, a 1U, two-socket model with up to five PCIe expansion slots for high-performance storage; the QuantaGrid D52BQ-2U, a two-socket rackmount server for software-defined workloads; the QuantaPlex T42S-2U four-node server, with each computing node supporting up to 16 memory modules and four storage drives; and the QuantaPlex T42SP-2U four-node server with NVMe support.

Supermicro X11 Server And Storage

Supermicro includes NVMe storage and 100G/25G Ethernet in its new Skylake-based X11 server and storage offerings. They include high-performance 1U and 2U UltraSuperServers; BigTwin high-performance, high-density 2U, four-node servers supporting 24 DIMMs and six hot-swap NVMe drives per node; 4U FatTwin optimized for cloud, high-performance computing, and enterprise applications; SuperBlade two-socket and four-socket blade servers with NVMe for enterprise, cloud and HPC applications; and new GPU-based SuperServers.

Themis Res-Xr6

Themis Computer unveiled its Skylake-based XR6 Rugged Enterprise Servers. The first RES-XR6 model is a 1U, two-socket rackmount server with up to 1.5 TB of ECC DDR4-2666 memory, three PCIe slots, and room for eight 2.5-inch hard drives or SSDs. The servers are enclosed in corrosion-resistant aluminum and stainless steel chassis with vibration dampeners and optional tamper-proofing and tamper-evidence features.

Tyan High-Performance Computing Platforms

Tyan introduced new motherboards, servers and storage appliances based on Skylake targeted at HPC, machine-learning and technical computing workloads. Included are single-socket and dual-socket motherboards, single-socket and dual-socket servers with up to eight GPUs, a two-socket server node targeting hyper-converged infrastructure and HPC workloads, other servers for data center deployments and IoT workloads, and a number of storage appliances.