4 ms·

Disclosure: Building a CSP business around SMCI products. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, I'm really just a happy customer. I feel like the reason

Disclosure: Building a CSP business around SMCI products. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, I'm really just a happy customer. I feel like the reason why SMCI has done so well in this AI round is because their server architecture is best in class and they have been able to support the internal changes necessary for AI workloads. They also support AMD CPUs, while others only offer Intel. 6 years ago, Cenly Chen / SMCI was saying AI was going to be huge and that total revenue would be $36B, in 2025 [0]. We are well past that number now. Amazing how AI turned out to be even bigger than anyone could have imagined, but at least they had some vision even back then. Dell, Giga, ZTS are all behind in their offerings while SMCI is iterating and are now even getting to the point of water cooling and L11 manufacturing. I just received a shipment of AS-8125GS-TNMR2 (8U MI300x) and the thing is an amazingly well designed beast of a chassis. Everything slots together perfectly. If you study the user documentation, the layouts of the internal block diagrams are fantastic and build for speed. We are lucky enough to have been able to open an account directly with them. It wasn't easy and required a ton of due diligence, but working with the team there has been a top notch experience. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzqBuiwkv5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzqBuiwkv5I

wmf 3y ago
Gotta love doing a ton of due diligence for the privilege of (checks notes) buying an off-the-shelf product at full price?
- latchkey 3y ago
  Oh, tell me where you can buy TNMR2+MI300x off the shelf! I checked BestBuy and they were out of stock.
  - wmf 3y ago
    My point is that it doesn't sound like they're customizing anything for you. It's ridiculous that you need permission to buy GPU servers. I realize there's a backlog but there are neutral ways to manage that.
    - codethatwerks 3y ago
      Wholesale vs. retail? They probably don’t want to deal with 1000 HNer accounts buying a single chip and do credit checks on them all (or do retail at all).
      - latchkey 3y ago
        That's exactly it. Normally they direct you to an OEM partner like Exxact. To be honest, they are really not set up for individual accounts. It was a bit of back and forth with the paperwork to get everything done, which took a lot of time. They asked for everything about the business. As for the direct account, once you have it, it is a golden egg because this way you also have direct support from their teams for anything you need. It is fantastic and I feel lucky to have gotten in.
        Throwawayhahzoh 3y ago
        They do do retail: https://store.supermicro.com/us_en/ https://store.supermicro.com/us_en/ Shipped a SYS-531A-IL workstation in less than a week including a weekend as my latest workstation configured with my chosen, albeit from a limited selection of memory, good CPUs and NVME and SATA drives (enterprise options for all of those), all properly kept cool per lm-sensors and smartmontools. I used their live chat to quickly get a couple of answers, it was packed well, and in theory for a reasonable up front cost they'll cross ship a replacement for the next 5 years. When Mr. Rsync.net was composing his message today I was adjusting my scripts to do their nightly backup to his service that uses their servers. For a couple of decades have bought a bunch of their motherboards through resellers for myself and family, and built some rack mount systems for a friend bought I forget from where with excellent results. The current swapping of hardware due to the above purchase took down a system that had been in service for a dozen years.
        latchkey 3y ago
        Awesome. Interesting, I just did a search for 8125GS-TNMR2 on that link, and nothing came up.

wmf 3y ago

Gotta love doing a ton of due diligence for the privilege of (checks notes) buying an off-the-shelf product at full price?

latchkey 3y ago
Oh, tell me where you can buy TNMR2+MI300x off the shelf! I checked BestBuy and they were out of stock.
- wmf 3y ago
  My point is that it doesn't sound like they're customizing anything for you. It's ridiculous that you need permission to buy GPU servers. I realize there's a backlog but there are neutral ways to manage that.
  - codethatwerks 3y ago
    Wholesale vs. retail? They probably don’t want to deal with 1000 HNer accounts buying a single chip and do credit checks on them all (or do retail at all).
    - latchkey 3y ago
      That's exactly it. Normally they direct you to an OEM partner like Exxact. To be honest, they are really not set up for individual accounts. It was a bit of back and forth with the paperwork to get everything done, which took a lot of time. They asked for everything about the business. As for the direct account, once you have it, it is a golden egg because this way you also have direct support from their teams for anything you need. It is fantastic and I feel lucky to have gotten in.
      - Throwawayhahzoh 3y ago
        They do do retail: https://store.supermicro.com/us_en/ https://store.supermicro.com/us_en/ Shipped a SYS-531A-IL workstation in less than a week including a weekend as my latest workstation configured with my chosen, albeit from a limited selection of memory, good CPUs and NVME and SATA drives (enterprise options for all of those), all properly kept cool per lm-sensors and smartmontools. I used their live chat to quickly get a couple of answers, it was packed well, and in theory for a reasonable up front cost they'll cross ship a replacement for the next 5 years. When Mr. Rsync.net was composing his message today I was adjusting my scripts to do their nightly backup to his service that uses their servers. For a couple of decades have bought a bunch of their motherboards through resellers for myself and family, and built some rack mount systems for a friend bought I forget from where with excellent results. The current swapping of hardware due to the above purchase took down a system that had been in service for a dozen years.
        latchkey 3y ago
        Awesome. Interesting, I just did a search for 8125GS-TNMR2 on that link, and nothing came up.