The Era of Artificial Intelligence requires its own class of servers, and rightly so. The AI tech that increasingly powers our businesses, finance, entertainment and scientific research is some of the most resource-intensive in history. Without AI servers, all this would grind to a halt.

But why? What’s so special about AI servers? And how are they able to power successive evolutions of large language models, generative AI, machine learning, and all the other AI-based workloads we’ve come to rely on day in and day out?

Put another way: What do AI servers have that standard servers don’t?

The answer can be summed up in a single word: More.

When it comes to AI servers, it’s all about managing a symphony. The musical instruments include multiple processors, GPUs, memory modules, networking hardware and expansion options.

Sure, your average general-purpose server has many similar components. But both the quantity and performance of each component is considerably lower than those of an AI server. That helps keep the price affordable, heat low, and workload options open. But it certainly doesn’t have the integrated GPU needed to run AI workloads.

Best of the Beasts

Supermicro specializes in the deployment of jaw-dropping power. The company’s newest 8U GPU Server (AS -8126GS-TNMR) is engineered to chew through the world’s toughest AI workloads. It’s powered by dual AMD EPYC processors and eight AMD Instinct MI350X or Instinct MI325X accelerators. This server can tackle AI workloads while staying cool and scaling up to meet increasing demand.

Keeping AI servers from overheating can be a tough job. Even a lowly, multipurpose business server kicks off a lot of heat. Temperatures build up around vital components like the CPU, GPU and storage devices. If that heat hangs around too long, it can lead to performance issues and, eventually, system failure.

Preventing heat-related issues in a single general-purpose server can be accomplished with a few heatsinks and small-diameter fans. But when it comes to high-performance, multi-GPU servers like Supermicro’s new 4U GPU A+ Server (AS -4126GS-NMR-LCC), liquid cooling becomes a must-have.

It’s also vital that AI servers be designed with expansion in mind. When an AI-powered app becomes successful, IT managers must be able to scale up quickly and without interruption.

Supermicro’s H14 8U 8-GPU System sets the standard for scalability. The H14 offers up to 20 storage drives and up to 12 PCI Express 5.0 (PCIe) x16 expansion slots.

Users can fill these high-bandwidth slots with a dizzying array of optional hardware, including:

• Network Interface Cards (NICs) like the new AI-focused AMD AI NIC for high-speed networking.
• NVMe storage to provide fast disk access.
• Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) modules, which can be set up for custom computation and reconfigured after deployment.
• Monitoring and control management cards. These enable IT staff to power servers on and off remotely, and also access BIOS settings.
• Additional GPUs to aid in AI training and inferencing.
• AI Accelerators. The AMD Instinct series is designed to tackle computing for AI, both training and inference.

A Different Class of Silicon

Hardware like the Supermicro GPU Server epitomizes what it means to be an AI server. That’s due in part to the components it’s designed to house. We’re talking about some of the most advanced processing tech available today.

As mentioned above, that tech comes courtesy of AMD, whose 5th Gen AMD EPYC 9005 series processors and recently announced AMD Instinct MI350 Series GPUs are powerful enough to tackle any AI workload.

AMD’s Instinct MI350 accelerators deliver a 4x generation-on-generation AI compute increase and a 35x generational leap in inferencing.

Say the word, and Supermicro will pack your AI Server with dual AMD EPYC processors containing up to 192 cores. They’ll install the latest AMD Instinct M1350X platform with 8 GPUs, fill all 24 DIMM slots with 6TB of DDR5 memory, and add an astonishing 16 NVMe U.2 drives. 

Advances Just Around the Corner

It seems like each new day brings stories about bold advances in AI. Apparently, our new robot friends may have the answer to some very human questions like, how can we cure our most insidious diseases? And how do we deal with the looming threat of climate crisis?

The AI models that could answer those questions—not to mention the ones that will help us find even better movies on Netflix—will require more power as they grow.

To meet those demands, AI server engineers are already experimenting with the next generation of advanced cooling for dense GPU clusters, enhanced hardware-based security, and new, more scalable modular infrastructure.

In fact, AI server designers have begun using their own AI models to create bigger and better AI servers. How very meta.

Do More:

• Meet the new Supermicro AI servers.

• Explore the AMD Instinct MI350 Series GPUs.