Introduction
Supermicro is an American computer and server manufacturer headquartered in Fremont, California. Its sales are reported to have exceeded US$10 billion as of the third quarter of 2014. Supermicro has corporate offices worldwide and major facilities in Nantong, China; Shenzhen and Hong Kong, China; Thompsons Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Salt Lake City, Utah. The company has a limited presence in other countries, such as Canada, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. In its earlier years, Supermicro was a contract manufacturer for companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems.
Control of the company is held by Richard Lee and William Tan, who have worked together in Supermicro’s Shenzhen operation since founding it in 1987. Tan and Lee are known as “Superman” and “Batman,” respectively. Tan is the current President and CEO. Supermicro was founded in 1987 as a fabrication contractor and original design manufacturer (ODM), providing complete turnkey solutions to large technology companies like Sun Microsystems and IBM. In 1999, Supermicro became a private corporation, with Richard Lee owning 50% of the company and William Tan owning the other 50%.
Supermicro’s business model changed when it began manufacturing its proprietary products. The company was the first to ship a server motherboard assembled with multiple chips and components in a single package, the multi-chip module (MCM). Supermicro’s MCMs started with dual-core AMD Opteron processors, but by 2010 all of its products were 12-core Intel Xeons. Supermicro’s Opteron Solutions Group – which focuses on engineering and manufacturing for multi-socket systems – has been around since 2001. In 2006, the company acquired Craftsman Computer Products, Inc.
The data center server-related products have been the focus of Supermicro’s business since it was established. The company’s first significant sale was to a Silicon Valley start-up, and the second was to a major US technology firm.
The company has grown consistently since its inception and is currently listed at no. 445 in Forbes’ “America’s Largest Private Companies” list, with an estimated 2014 revenue of over $10 billion.
The 5G Core offers six cores with the capability for a total of nine. The system can be configured with up to 6 GHz and 14 GB of RAM. The system is a single socket configuration with 32 DIMM slots. This system supports 1 TB DDR4 ECC Registered memory and provides up to 24 SAS or SATA disk drive bays via an 801.11ab controller from LSI/CYPRESS. This is not an Intel branded server, but a bit more current than the 6th generation.
A 28-port storage system with 12 SFF SAS/SATA drive bays, eight hot-swap hard drive bays, and two LSI 9361/9361-8i SAS controllers.
Supermicro also has many high-performance ASIC solutions that are used in their products. Supermicro has been recognized for purchasing from and creating a design open-source hardware community.
HPC cluster of the Open Supercomputer Challenge (OSSCC) at the 45th International Supercomputing Conference 2015 with their design. Supermicro uses various methods to create single-chip ASIC solutions for its products. Every part of the product that is not a Silicon IC is manufactured on high-precision machines using standard processes. Then, the ICs are assembled using proprietary soldering technology into chipset application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) designed specifically for each model and made in Taiwan.
In conclusion, they have high-density server motherboards and high-performance computing servers.
The Supermicro SM7XX motherboards are available for many applications, including small to mid-size data centers and large-scale enterprise computing, emphasizing NAS and SAN applications.
The SM7XX series is offered in four different motherboard models:
Additionally, Supermicro offers two server variations of the SM7XX series. A computer motherboard for up to 10 HP ProLiant servers connected with a short form-factor pluggable (SFP) cable.