Founder Charles Liang CEO Charles Liang | Founded 1993 Revenue 1.99 billion USD (2015) Number of employees 2,247 (2015) | |
Traded as NASDAQ: SMCIS&P 600 Component Industry Computer hardware, Computer peripherals Products Motherboards, Chassis, Servers, Desktops, Workstations, Storage Systems, Networking Equipment, Power Supplies, and Components Stock price SMCI (NASDAQ) US$ 25.35 -0.05 (-0.20%)31 Mar, 4:00 PM GMT-4 - Disclaimer Headquarters San Jose, California, United States | ||
Supermicro super minute top of rack switching technology
Super Micro Computer, Inc.(Chinese: 美超微電腦股份有限公司) or Supermicro (Chinese: 美超微; NASDAQ: SMCI) develops and provides green computing solutions for cloud computing, datacenter, enterprise IT, big data, embedded, and high performance computing customers. The company’s offerings range from complete server, storage, blade and workstations to rack solutions, networking devices, server management software and technology support and services, and related subassemblies.
Contents
- Supermicro super minute top of rack switching technology
- Supermicro x10dai dual xeon motherboard overview
- History
- Product scope
- Key technologies
- Environmental responsibility
- Top 500 Listings
- References
Supermicro was founded in 1993 (1) by Charles Liang, Sara Liu and Wally Liaw. Being a hardware engineer with a background in power electronics, Mr. Liang set out to improve computer performance by designing motherboards for embedded and server systems that increased reliability, density and power efficiency. The designs set several benchmarks. Over the years Supermicro has evolved into an enterprise that provides complete optimized end-to-end solutions for compute, network and storage applications.
The company, incorporated in Delaware in August 2006, is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California. Next to the headquarters location Supermicro is developing a 2.5 million square foot Green Computing Park and manufacturing space. Supermicro has further expanded global operations, with manufacturing spaces in the Netherlands and a Science and Technology Park in Taiwan, and withsubsidiaries located in Japan and China.
As of June 30, 2016, Supermicro employed 2,655 full-time employees across its operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and posted $2.216 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016. A publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ with ticker symbol SMCI, Supermicro had its IPO in March 2007 (4).
As an OEM supplier, Supermicro is able to provide custom solutions to many large technology companies, in various sectors. Supermicro not only offers complete systems, solutions, and subassemblies such as serverboards and chassis through its large network of channel partners, value-added resellers, system integrators and distributors but also sells direct to end users, providing global services and support to meet their demanding service level agreements (SLA’s).
All research & development (R&D) efforts are performed in-house. Because of this, Supermicro can streamline the development process to accelerate time to market.
Supermicro was ranked the 18th fastest growing company (5) on Fortune Magazine’s Top 100 list of the world’s largest US publicly traded companies in 2016 and the fastest growing IT Infrastructure company (September 15, 2016 edition).
Supermicro x10dai dual xeon motherboard overview
History
In October 1993, engineer Charles Liang founded Supermicro in California. Formed in a garage based in San Jose, Charles worked with Wally Liaw and Sara Liu to build and transform a boutique motherboard design company into a multi-billion-dollar server company delivering products to customers of all sizes, including mid-market and enterprise level customers.
Following is a brief history of Supermicro:
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Product scope
Supermicro offers server barebones ("superservers"), motherboards, chassis, rack cabinets, networking equipment like switches, power supplies and a number of extension cards and accessories. Supermicro is known for the world's first double-sided storage chassis that featured 36 hot-swap 3.5" hard drive trays with 24 in the front and 12 in the rear. The chassis, offered in 2009, was roughly the size of the ordinary desktop (4 HE).
Key technologies
SuperBlade® Solutions
In 2007, Supermicro introduced a blade server range called SuperBlade (5). These systems are self-contained servers designed to share a common computing infrastructure. SuperBlade® solutions include GPU/Xeon Phi™ Blade, TwinBlade®, NVMe StorageBlade, PCI-E Blade, and NVMe DataCenterBlade®.
MicroBlade™ Solutions
Supermicro released the MicroBlade™ system in 2014 (5). This houses 14/28 hot-swappable blade servers in a 3U/6U enclosure. The architecture incorporates networking, storage and unified remote management in a high-density enclosure and was developed for scale-out or parallel workloads.
Twin Family:
In 2007, Supermicro launched a patented Twin architecture (5). At the time, this technology was the first of its kind (5). Each node in the system maintains independent, full-function system control and management. The range is wholly deployed in HPC/Data Center environments and has expanded to include 1U Twin, 1U TwinPro™, 2U TwinPro²™, 2U TwinPro™, 2U Twin, 2U Twin2®, FatTwin™ and BigTwin™ since launching.
GPU Supercomputing Servers:
In March 2010, Supermicro announced a range of servers that combined parallel GPUs with multi-core CPUs, in a single server system. The goal behind developing this technology was to give a broader spectrum of users the ability to implement tasks that could traditionally only be addressed with highly scaled systems, such as supercomputers. In 2016, Supermicro debuted the industry’s first 1U 4x GPU server, optimized for Parallel Computing and HPC applications. (5)
MicroCloud:
The Supermicro MicroCloud is a modular server system which provides 8, 12 or 24 independently operated server nodes in a single chassis. This range is predominantly found in cloud computing, web hosting and virtualization environments.
SuperWorkstations:
The company’s range of workstations are marketed for content creation and multimedia applications and include compact, high-end and GPU optimized solutions.
Embedded:
Supermicro’s range of embedded solutions includes servers, chassis, motherboards, Atom™ solutions and IoT Gateway solutions.
SuperStorage
The company's range of storage servers are known as SuperStorage. This includes high density servers with support for Non Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSDs, SAS or SATA SSDs, or Hard Disk Drives. The company was one of the first tech firms to deploy U.2 NVMe SSDs as well as support for M.2 form factors. The portfolio of all-flash NVMe server solutions spans across server ranges including Ultra, Blade and Twin as well as Simply Double, JBODs and SuperStorage. Supermicro also offers a range of Double Sided Storage by integrating hot-swap drive bays on both the front and rear of the chassis, with the aim to maximize storage density.
Supermicro Total Solutions
Supermicro has developed a range of total solutions which combine hardware, software and service, in a single stack, in partnership with software companies such as VMware, Red Hat, Apache Hadoop and IBM. The growing range of solutions address virtualization, cloud, software-defined storage and big data needs of both enterprise and SMB customers.
Supermicro Rack Scale Design (SRSD)
This is a pre-packaged and validated rack offering. Built using Supermicro server and storage solutions, the rack shares compute, network and storage resources, as well as power and cooling. The management software is based on Intel RSD framework and is designed for use in large scale data center environments.
Motherboards
Supermicro offers a range of motherboards featuring ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, Extended-ATX and other proprietary form factors. Supermicro denotes that all its motherboards (single, dual and integrated sockets) use enterprise, server grade components.
Networking
Supermicro offers both switches and add-on cards. The company partners with Mellanox to provide 25G/100G Ethernet solutions and Intel® for Omni-Path Architecture.
The company has developed the Supermicro Super I/O Module (SIOM), a mezzanine card designed to slot into the motherboard. This is intended to free PCI-E slots on the motherboard and increase networking flexibility.
Software
Supermicro offers a range of software and tools to assist in the management or monitoring of products. These products include:
- IPMICFG: In-band command line tool for remote mnanagement, providing IPMI and Supermicro proprietary OEM commands.
- SMCIPMITool: Out-of-band command line tool, providing IPMI and Supermicro proprietary OEM commands.
- IPMIView: GUI-based application for remote management, providing IPMI and Supermicro proprietary OEM features and including a built-in trap receiver.
- SuperDoctor 5 (SD5): Health and availability monitoring with alert capabilities.
- Supermicro Power Manager (SPM): Based on the Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) package. Monitors CPU, Memory, System Power Usage and remotely controls power consumption.
- Supermicro Update Manager (SUM): In-band and Out-of-band command line tool, supporting firmware (BIOS, BMC, etc.) image updates and configurations.
- Supermicro Server Manager (SSM): Provides a comprehensive solution to manage and maintain Supermicro servers in an IT datacenter from a single console view.
Power Supplies
In 2011, Supermicro introduced the super compact Power Stick (L220mm x W54.5mm x H40mm) 1U 400W supply module which conformed to Energy Star 2.0 specifications. In 2012 the company introduced Platinum Level High Efficiency power supplies (5), including 95%+ efficiency digital switching power supplies. Today a large portion Supermicro power supplies, including the Power Stick, offer over 96% (Titanium Level) power efficiency and have high energy efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated loads, to earn an 80 Plus certification. Power Stick modules are compact power supplies, with the same feature functionality and efficiency as full sized power supplies.
Cooling subsystems
Supermicro servers feature built-in temperature and power management through IPMI and include heatsinks, fans and air shrouds to optimize system cooling.
Services and Support
Supermicro’s technical support program offers onsite services and support for mission-critical uptime requirements. All warranty information is found on the company website, with downloads available for system support and quick-references to product information.
Environmental responsibility
In keeping with the company’s ‘We Keep IT Green®’ motto, one of the primary objectives for Supermicro design engineers is to develop technology that is highly energy efficient.
In 2017, Supermicro opened a new resource efficient ‘LEED’ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) center in Silicon Valley.
This facility is designed to generate its own clean fuel-cell based electricity on-site. One megawatt-hour Bloom Energy Server will provide the majority of the facility’s energy load, and is designed to deliver sustainability benefits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, avoid air pollutants and reduce water usage.
Top 500 Listings
The lists below Features Supermicro heterogeneous system architectures (CPU/GPU) that have placed in the Top 500 Supercomputer list
Top500 List - 2015
Top500 List - 2016
Green 500 Listings (6)
In June 2014, the GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology’s (TITECH) TSUBAME-KFC supercomputer ranked 1st on the Green 500 list this system.
This system designed by TITECH used Supermicro compute nodes submerged in insulated oil to reach a rating of 4.5 gigaflops/watt.
The lists below are the latest Green500 supercomputers using Supermicro systems.
Green500 List - 2014
· #264 DOE/SC/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Supermico SuperServer 6028TP-HTFR, Xeon E5-2670v3 12C 2.3 GHz, Infiniband FDR
Green500 List - 2015
Green500 List - 2016