Server motherboard specialist Supermicro has been taking steps into the client-segment for a couple of years now under its SUPERO brand. Its latest creation is a socket LGA1200 motherboard based on the Intel Z490 chipset, the Pro Gaming C9Z490-PGW. There isn't too much bling or color, except some contemporary design cues such as the rear I/O shroud, and diagonal accents on the PCH and M.2 heatsinks. The feature-set of this board looks like it's been drawn up by people who design enterprise boards. The board pulls power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it with a 12-phase "server grade" VRM. Its BIOS ROM chip is socketed. There's equal focus on U.2 as M.2.

The star attraction is the PCIe setup. The board uses a PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express gen 3.0 x48 bridge chip to drive two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots at full x16 bandwidth, which can split between four slots in x8/x8/x8/x8 configuration when all of them are populated. Storage connectivity includes one each of M.2-2280 and M.2-22110 slots; two U.2 ports with 32 Gbps wiring; and four SATA 6 Gbps ports. Networking options include a 10 GbE interface pulled by an Aquantia AQC107 controller, a second Intel i219-V PHY handling a 1 GbE port, and 802.11ax + Bluetooth 5 wireless connectivity provided by an Intel AX201 module. USB connectivity includes four 10 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 2 ports, and six 5 Gbps gen 1 ports. The onboard audio setup features a high-grade Realtek ALC1220 codec. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Today Intel's CPU based on yet unannounced architecture got revealed in the SiSoft benchmark database. Featuring six cores and twelve threads running at 3 GHz, it appears like a regular 14 nm CPU that's already available, however, when digging through the details, many things are revealed. The newly submitted CPU has a different L2 cache configuration from previous CPU offerings, with this chip featuring 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, it is unlike anything else Intel currently offers. Ice Lake mobile chips feature 512 KB, while the highest amount of L2 cache is currently present on i9-10980XE, which features 1 MB of L2.

It is unknown where this CPU fits in the whole 14/10 nm lineup, as we don't know if this is an iteration of 10 nm Tiger Lake or the rumored 14 nm Rocket Lake CPU. All we know is that this CPU features new architecture compared to Skylake iterations that are currently being used, judging by L2 cache bump, which usually happens on new architectures. The platform used for benchmarking this CPU was SuperMicro X12DAi-N SMC X12 dual-socket motherboard, which featured two of these new CPUs for a total of 12 cores and 24 threads.

SuperMicro may not be household name in consumer motherboards right now, but they once were a decent alternative in the market - or so I've been told by people much more knowledgeable than me in that regard, as I never laid my hands on one. The company is now more known for its server products, where it has focused most of its attention in the past decade - an effort that gave it a good, third-place hold in that market. And if the company can command such a market share in a much more requirements-heavy environment such as the server market demands, then it's likely those design decisions and developments will find themselves trickling down to the consumer side in any sort of consumer, gaming-grade product the company decided to tackle.

To that end, SuperMicro is gearing up to re introduce themselves to the consumer market, accompanying the wave of new technologies coming to the market in a few years - namely, PCIe Gen 4 and DDR5 memory. The company seems to think that this will mark a perfect opportunity for a strong comeback to the consumer market - where they now only offer a handful of motherboard solutions for Intel's CPUs. One such example is the C9Z390-PGW motherboard, based on Intel's Z390 chipset - with its 10-phase VRM design, PLC chip for doubling of PCIe lanes, and 10 Gigabit Lan. But not only on said "typical" consumer motherboard techonologies will SuperMicro be delivering - if the company has its way, anything from 5G, IoT, Mission Learning and Artificial Intelligence can be incorporated for some use case or another on consumer-grade motherboards, thus providing an axis of penetration for SuperMicro - and its entire partner eco-system.

In a development that underlines the national security necessity of moving electronics manufacturing out of China, server motherboards made by Supermicro in China, have been found to carry a "spy chip." This startling development is the result of a secret 2015 US Government investigation unearthed by Bloomberg. The Chinese government has allegedly been using hardware-based spyware in Supermicro motherboards that are manufactured in China; to spy on major American enterprises, including (but not limited to) Amazon Web Services and Apple, among others, who use Supermicro motherboards in their data-centers. The level of surveillance includes attempts to steal trade-secrets and intellectual property.

Fearing loss in business, affected cloud-computing providers, including AWS and Apple, have each posted strong denials that their hardware infrastructure is vulnerable to foreign government surveillance. Apple stated: "We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg's reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed. Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple."

Toshiba today announced that Super Micro Computer, Inc. has successfully qualified the MG07ACA Series 14TB and 12TB HDD SATA models on select Supermicro storage server platforms. Using a 9-disk, helium-sealed design, the new MG07ACA Series provides power-efficient capacity and storage density, which is now available on Supermicro's popular SuperStorage (SSG) line-up of server platforms. The MG07 Series industry-leading 14TB capacity allows data center customers a choice of storage server platform solutions available through Supermicro's extensive network of distributors as well as systems and solutions integrators.

"As we continue to develop solutions to meet the growing capacity needs of enterprise and cloud data center customers, Toshiba is pleased to be working with Supermicro on solutions utilizing our new MG07ACA Series helium-sealed HDD," said Shuji Takaoka, General Manager of Storage Products Sales & Marketing Division at Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation. "Toshiba's innovative, power-efficient 9-disk design delivers the highest capacity available in the market today using conventional magnetic recording, and matches up well with Supermicro's highly-regarded lineup of server and storage solutions."

Two weeks ago, Intel indirectly confirmed via the release notes for its Rapid Storage Technology driver that the Z390 platform will support the current "Coffee Lake" and soon-to-be-released "Cannon Lake" processors. SuperMicro's Z390 motherboard (C9Z390-CG-IW) recently popped up in a few 3DMark results to confirm this compatibility. The motherboard was tested alongside the Intel Core i7-8700T and Intel Core i7-8700K six-core processors. Therefore, it's safe to say that the upcoming Z390 motherboards will employ the LGA1151 socket.

The first socket LGA1151 motherboard based on Intel's upcoming Z390 Express chipset was spotted on SiSoft SANDRA database. The board is SuperMicro C7Z390-PGW, a client-segment motherboard by SuperMicro under its SuperO brand. Intel is slating launch of the Z390 Express chipset for some time in the second half of 2018, following the early-2018 launches of H370 Express, B360 Express, and H310 Express.

The Z390 Express chipset adds to the feature-set of the platform, with an integrated Programmable Quad-Core Audio DSP, SoundWire digital audio interface, an integrated 10 Gbps USB 3.1 controller, integrated 802.11ac WLAN controller (with external PHY), an integrated SDIO controller (for card readers), and support for newer generation "Titan Ridge" Thunderbolt 3.0 controller.

AMD has been steadily increasing output and availability of their latest take on the server market with their EPYC CPUs. These are 32-core, 64-thread monsters that excel in delivering a better feature set in 1P configuration than even some of Intel's 2P setups, and reception for these AMD processors has been pretty warm as a result. The usage of an MCM design to create a 4-way cluster of small 8-core processor packages has allowed AMD to improve yields with minimum retooling and changes to its manufacturing lines, which in turn, has increased yields and profits for a company that sorely needed a a breakout product.

Intel's Coffee Lake launch has shown the telltale signs of a product that wasn't originally planned to launch as early as it did. Intel's decision to pull the release date of Coffee Lake based CPUs - and its accompanying platform - have translated into an overall lack of availability for the latest Intel core processors, and a staggered launch for their platform chipsets, with only the higher-tier Z370 being available for motherboard designs as of writing.

It's expected that Intel's lower tier chipsets, such as the B360 chipset, will only be released during the first quarter of 2018. However, a recent leak that has surfaced in Sisoftware's Official Live Ranker has revealed a SuperMicro C7B360-CB-M board. following SuperMicro's known naming scheme, it's a somewhat "in your face" statement that this is a B360 chipset test board, in the Micro-ATX form-factor. The fact that this board has surfaced already (and especially considering SuperMicro's Z370 board, SuperMicro's C7Z370-CG-L, surfaced just 85 days before the platform launch) could point towards an earlier than expected release time-frame for B360 boards. It's arguable that this Intel generation is the one that offers itself the most to budget chipset offerings, considering Intel's Core i5 8400's placement as one of the best bang-for-buck CPUs from the Intel field in a long while.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, and networking solutions and green computing technology, today announced support for NVIDIA Tesla V100 PCI-E and V100 SXM2 GPUs on its industry leading portfolio of GPU server platforms.

For maximum acceleration of highly parallel applications like artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, autonomous vehicle systems, energy and engineering/science, Supermicro's new 4U system with next-generation NVIDIA NVLink is optimized for overall performance. The SuperServer 4028GR-TXRT supports eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 SXM2 GPU accelerators with maximum GPU-to-GPU bandwidth for important HPC clusters and hyper-scale workloads. Incorporating the latest NVIDIA NVLink GPU interconnect technology with over five times the bandwidth of PCI-E 3.0, this system features an independent GPU and CPU thermal zoning design, which ensures uncompromised performance and stability under the most demanding workloads.

In addition to the CZ170-OCE, Supermicro also unveiled the C7X99-OCE. This socket LGA2011v3 motherboard appears to be derived from one of its workstation boards. You can tell from the blank traces over where a remote management chip would normally rest. All that's changed is the PCB color (to black), the slots (blue+black), and more sporty looking heatsinks over the CPU VRM and the X99 PCH. The board covers all the basics of this platform, but gives you a pair of Intel-driven gigabit Ethernet connections, onboard OC fine-tuning buttons, and ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Missing in action is M.2 slots. We have no way of telling if Supermicro tucked away M.2 slots at the reverse side of the PCB.

Supermicro launched the first socket LGA1151 motherboard featuring a PCIe bridge chip that expands the board's lane budget, something that not even the $600 ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme features. The new CZ170-OCE from the traditionally server/workstation motherboard maker is based on Intel Z170 Express chipset, and features a PCI-Express gen 3.0 x48 bridge chip (likely the PLX PEX-8747), which takes the PCI-Express 3.0 x16 PEG port from the CPU, and puts out 32 lanes, which are wired to the board's three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots.

The topmost slot runs at x16 full-time, while the middle and bottom slots are x8/x8 when both are populated (x16/NC/x16 or x16/x8/x8). The designers lavishly spent its remaining lane budget on two PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slots, and a 32 Gb/s M.2-22110 slot. Besides the 32 Gb/s M.2 slot, storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Other modern connectivity includes two USB 3.1 ports (one each of type-A and type-C), two gigabit Ethernet connections (one driven by Intel I219V and another by Intel I210-AT), HD audio, and four other USB 3.0 ports.

Since Intel fully integrated the core logic (northbridge) with its processors, overclocking them by tinkering with the base-clock (BClk, the primary clock domain from which the CPU's clock speed is set using multipliers), became unstable, as it was used as a cadence for other key components on the chip, such as iGPU and PCIe root-complex. Apparently, with its 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors, Intel has de-linked base-clock from other clock domains, re-enabling overclocking using BClk, which is particularly helpful on non-K (upwards multiplier locked) SKUs.

Some of the first motherboards that enable BClk overclocking on Skylake CPUs come from Supermicro, the server/workstation motherboard maker that's dipping its toes into DIY enthusiast platforms these days. "Dhenzjhen," an overclocker from the Philippines struck gold by achieving a 5.00 GHz overclock on a Core i3-6320 dual-core chip, using a Supermicro C7H170-M motherboard (which is driven by an Intel H170 chipset). Shortly after news of this feat broke, ASRock fired an email to the press, stating that its Z170 Extreme7+ motherboard is able to support 4.50 GHz clocks on a Core i5-6600 quad-core chip, using an experimental BIOS. ASRock is validating this BIOS internally, and hopes to release it "very soon."

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server, storage technology and green computing, is exhibiting its range of GPU optimized platforms at the 2013 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2013) in San Jose, CA this week. At the show, Supermicro will exhibit its extensive line of FatTwin and SuperServer GPU platforms, including the industry's only 1U 3x NVIDIA GRID K2 qualified SuperServer (SYS-1027GR-TRF).

Live systems featuring NVIDIA GRID K1 and K2 boards will demonstrate how NVIDIA Kepler architecture-based technology maximizes server utilization and, when scaled out, can support over 600 users per 42U rack in existing reference designs, and with a forthcoming 4U FatTwin configuration can support 1,800+ users per rack. Combined with increased security and system manageability, NVIDIA GRID delivers the most flexible, accelerated VDI experience for end users. In addition to the demos, Supermicro executives will present strategies and server architecture designs to consider when selecting GPU platforms for HPC, cloud and workstation applications.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, announces a new high-performance, high-capacity storage appliance developed in collaboration with Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) built on Supermicro's 3U 11x PCI-E SuperServer (SYS-6037R-TXRF).

This dual Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 based platform features up to ten 2.4 TB Fusion ioDrive2 Duo (F01-001-2T41-CS-0001) ioMemory products with up to 3 GB/s and 935K IOPs leaving an additional PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8) slot available for a high-bandwidth network expansion card such as Supermicro's 10 GbE or FDR/QDR InfiniBand add-on cards.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, has readied a wide selection of server platforms for Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors based on Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture in form-factors ranging from 1U-3U rack mount systems to 4U Tower servers.

Supermicro's 4-node FatTwin platform has a new model which supports up to 3 Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor cards per U for a total of 12 coprocessors in 4U. With dual Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 and up to 512 GB of memory support per node this hybrid SuperServer offers an amazing amount of parallel processing power to accelerate research while simplifying development of highly-parallel applications. A key advantage of the FatTwin platform is its shared resource, power saving architecture with high-efficiency 8 cm heavy-duty cooling fans, optimized airflow and Platinum Level (94%+) power supplies, which combined provide up to 16% greater efficiency over similar server systems.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. , a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, has upgraded its line of A+ servers with the just released AMD (NYSE: AMD) Opteron 6300 Series processors. The new A+ server and tower platforms deliver up to 24 percent higher performance over prior generation solutions and maximize processor density and core counts to support more VMs for public and private cloud deployments. Performance per watt is up to 40 percent higher with intelligent thermal/power monitoring and management, enabling datacenters running robust large-scale software systems to maximize performance while lowering overall TCO. With dual-processor (DP) and multi-processor (MP) architectures, Supermicro ups the performance bar for data center and high-performance computing (HPC) cluster applications.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, now offers NVIDIA Maximus technology in its latest high-end, enterprise-class X9 SuperWorkstation (7047GR-TRF), allowing users to simultaneously design, render and simulate on the same workstation, avoiding traditional, time-consuming and costly processing downtime. Supermicro's NVIDIA Maximus certified solution integrates an NVIDIA Quadro series graphics processing unit (GPU) dedicated for design and visualization tasks with four NVIDIA Tesla C2075 co-processors dedicated to handling compute-intensive tasks like simulation-an industry-first configuration of NVIDIA Maximus technology.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, today announced additions to its Ethernet switch product line with a pair of powerful new 52 port 1 Gigabit Ethernet switches. The SSE-G2252 and its companion SSE-G2252P are IEEE 802.3az compliant providing Energy Efficient Ethernet services and offer 1 GbE connectivity over 48x RJ45 ports and 4x SFP ports. The SSE-G2252P model is IEEE 802.3at compliant and supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), offering the most flexible power budget allocation in the industry.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing unveils its new generation server platforms supporting the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 families at CeBIT 2012 in Hannover, Germany this week. This comprehensive product launch showcases the vast array of systems, serverboards and computing solutions Supermicro has deployed delivering higher performance with Intel's newest 8 core, 16 thread processors.

Debuting alongside this launch are innovative, free-air cooled systems designed to withstand 47 C operating temperature environments that make it easier to achieve a better PUE (e.g., 1.05). In addition, Supermicro has created a new platform architecture dubbed "FatTwin", an evolution of Supermicro's Twin architecture, offering enhanced system cooling, power savings, lower TCO and ultimate flexibility to support any application or upgrade path. Major advances in high-efficiency (95%) Digital Switching power supplies and integrated UPS battery backup module technologies provide increased efficiency and high-availability for mission critical applications. When combined with full rack integration services and new Data Center Management software that manages health, power and maintenance of servers in large deployments, Supermicro provides the most complete, scalable computing solutions with maximized performance and the highest levels of efficiency.

NVIDIA Corporation and Supermicro today announced the immediate availability of a new class of server that combines massively parallel NVIDIA Tesla GPUs with multi-core CPUs in a single 1U rack-mount server. This unique configuration delivers 12 times the performance of a traditional quad-core CPU-based 1U server.
Supermicro is first to market and is demonstrating the NVIDIA Tesla-based SuperServer 6016T-GF-TM2 at Computex 2009 in Taiwan this week (booth # N806, Nangang Upper Exhibition Hall).

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced the launch of 4-watt and 8-watt Intel Atom processor-based Server Building Block Solutions. These extreme low-power and quiet solutions deliver the best expansion and storage features of any Atom-based platform and are designed for embedded industrial PC (IPC) applications.

These quiet, energy saving solutions make ideal storage and network appliances or print and email servers. In addition, Supermicro's mini-tower chassis with advanced user-friendly design features create a very cost-effective home or office workstation for basic computing including Internet usage, office and educational applications.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a leader in application-optimized, high-performance server solutions, today launched a comprehensive new line of server and workstation solutions specially designed to support the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed Nehalem). Supermicro has started shipping its new 2U Twin2 ("Twin Squared" with four hot-pluggable DP nodes), newly invented Twin GPU 1U server/workstation, the award-winning 1U Twin, SuperBlade, flexible Universal I/O (UIO) server, SAS2 storage systems, as well as its strong line of traditional application-optimized server solutions. Featuring the highest efficiency in the industry power supplies (93%+), cooling subsystems and motherboard designs, Supermicro solutions set a new record for the best performance-per-watt (375 GFLOPS/kW) and also deliver the best performance-per-dollar and performance-per-square-foot.

Based on the company's latest application-optimized Server Building Block architectures, Supermicro maximizes the new Nehalem technology, which includes QPI (Intel QuickPath Interconnect) for up to 6.4GT/s, Integrated DDR3 Memory Controller, multiple power envelops, and Intel Turbo Boost Technology, to provide the industry's highest performing and most optimized new generation server solutions.