Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids Platforms Shown Before SC22

At SC22, there was a cocktail hour held by Intel in downtown Dallas celebrating the reemergence of the show after the pandemic years. While most were focused on the cocktails STH was focused on the hardware. We saw a bunch of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) systems from different vendors and a little surprise. We saw the new Intel Data Center GPU Max series as well.

Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids Platforms Shown Before SC22

First up, we saw the QCT QuantaGrid D54Q-2U motherboard. Please excuse the lighting on these. The boards were shown behind glass cases with a DJ playing and fun lighting. We were here for the servers.

If this motherboard looks familiar, we have seen it liquid cooled in our QCT Liquid Cooled Rack Intel Sapphire Rapids Bake-Off. We have also used it in our Hands-on Benchmarking with Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon Accelerators piece.

Next to that, we saw the Supermicro BigTwin X13 edition. The BigTwin is Supermicro’s higher end 2U 4-node (2U4N) platform. We last looked at the Supermicro BigTwin Intel Xeon Ice Lake Edition but have been covering that line for several generations. It appears as though the next-generation is ready.

Lenovo had its Florence platform with Neptune liquid cooling on-site. Here is a shot of the Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 I V3 with four Intel DC GPU Max OAM modules and Sapphire Rapids.

ASUS had its mainstream Sapphire Rapids motherboard on display, although a black PCB and dark lighting made this a bit darker of an image. It appears as though ASUS is taking a similar approach to its motherboard design as we have seen in recent motherboards/ platforms like the ASUS RS720A-E11-RS24U server we reviewed.

Atos had its new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable blade. Here is the Atos BullSequana X3410.

Here is Intel’s Sapphire Rapids compute blade. This is called the Intel DSG D50DNP. One can see that this is liquid-cooled via CoolIT. We went up to the CoolIT facilities in Calgary earlier this year and actually saw this platform on the test bench. We went through CoolIT’s prototyping for new systems like this in How Liquid Cooling is Prototyped and Tested in the CoolIT Liquid Lab Tour. We also built an entire liquid loop in How Liquid Cooling Servers Works with Gigabyte and CoolIT.

We saw another Aurora Exascale blade for Intel’s installation in HPE Shasta platforms. This is one we have had A Look at a 2023 Top500 Aurora Supercomputer Node with Intel Ponte Vecchio for more details:

Intel also had the 4x Ponte Vecchio or now Intel DC GPU Max series OAM assembly next to an OAM module.

What was different is that the bottom was an Intel DC Max Series 1350 or 1550 PCIe GPU. You can learn about the new New Intel Data Center GPU Max at SC22 Including PCIe and OAM. This is the first PCIe card we have seen taken apart.

Final Words

We are going to have a lot more from the show as the floor opens up later. Stay tuned to STH for more of that. We fully expect not just a deluge of Intel Sapphire Rapids systems to be shown as Intel is allowing partners to show more of its upcoming chips. We also expect to see the AMD EPYC Genoa platforms at the event. We are going to take a lot of photos and video. SC22 looks much more like a normal pre-pandemic Supercomputing conference than SC21.