At Computex 2023, we noticed a Supermicro ARS-221GL-NR. This was the system at Supermicro’s keynote that integrates the brand new NVIDIA Grace Superchip 144 core Arm server together with applied sciences like BlueField-3, NVIDIA H100 GPUs, and even E1.S SSDs.
Supermicro ARS-221GL-NR NVIDIA Grace Superchip MGX Server
The Supermicro ARS-221GL-NR is the corporate’s NVIDIA MGX providing. NVIDIA MGX is the corporate’s platform that, as of now, is generally being adopted for NVIDIA Grace/ Grace Hopper techniques. This can be a nice instance of a 2U MGX system the place the rear is all growth slots for extra GPUs in addition to BlueField DPUs.
Having a look on the rear, we are able to see two twin width GPUs put in and the entire cabled connections to the rear I/O.
Right here is among the risers.
Right here is the riser on the opposite facet.
The entrance of the server can also be attention-grabbing. This explicit mannequin, which was proven throughout Supermicro’s Computex 2023 keynote, has a middle channel devoted to airflow.
On the best, there are 16x E1.S EDSFF drive bays. This can be a nice instance of what we mentioned in E1 and E3 EDSFF to Take Over from M.2 and a couple of.5 in SSDs the place the smaller kind issue permits higher density.
The left facet has three energy provides with cables operating to a rear enter possibility. There appears to be room for a fourth.
Within the middle, we now have the NVIDIA Grace superchip. It appears to be like like there’s one heatsink per 72 core Arm CPU onboard.
On the baseboard, we now have an array of fan headers.
The extra attention-grabbing characteristic of the Supermicro G1SMH motherboard is the array of what look like MCIO PCIe connections. We didn’t see the cables from the motherboard to the rear GPUs put in, so maybe that is the place these would go in a manufacturing system.
On the opposite facet we are able to see the M.2 boot SSD.
There are extra MCIO connectors as properly.
General, there’s a whole lot of expandability. The NVIDIA Grace Superchip has 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes from the specs we discovered, so it has I/O to deal with many extra units unfold throughout the 2 CPUs within the Grace Superchip.
Closing Phrases
These are thrilling techniques. Whereas one might instantly look to the AmpereOne platform with 192 Arm cores, the massive benefit of the NVIDIA Grace Superchip is that it contains increased reminiscence bandwidth through its onboard reminiscence. Nonetheless, for many who need to have many cores with extra reminiscence than present HBM-enabled CPUs supply, having a 144-core NVIDIA Grace Superchip server just like the Supermicro ARS-221GL-NR could be a singular possibility.
