The annual OCP (Open Compute Project) Global Summit held every fall in San Jose, California, is a significant event for the global open computing community, bringing together industry leaders, researchers, and pioneers to discuss the latest developments in OCP projects and to share future challenges and innovation opportunities. The 2024 OCP Global Summit, taking place from October 15 to 17, centers around the theme "From Ideas to Impact," emphasizing OCP's commitment to accelerating responses to emerging trends and market demands while promoting openness, efficiency, sustainability, and scalability within the data center industry.
At this year's summit, a competitive atmosphere filled the venue as exhibitors showcased their latest server solutions. As a leading global server chassis manufacturer, Chenbro made a significant impression by unveiling its latest server solutions based on the OCP DC-MHS (Data Center Modular Hardware System) architecture and AI server chassis products based on NVIDIA's MGX architecture. Chenbro's new products, co-developed with various system vendors and branded manufacturers, were prominently displayed across multiple booths at the event, underscoring the company's dedication to accelerating the development and time-to-market of next-generation products for its customers.
Expanding presence at OCP Summit with next-generation server solutions
Ramble Zhang, Associate Vice President of Global R&D and Product Development at Chenbro, highlighted that the Open Compute Project (OCP) was established in 2011 by Meta (formerly Facebook), Intel, Rackspace, and Goldman Sachs as a non-profit organization. Its mission is to promote open data center hardware architectures, drive product designs, and foster practical applications for its members and the industry.
The initial aim of OCP was to provide ready-to-use hardware solutions for cloud service providers (CSPs) offering content or application services, significantly benefiting Meta due to its large-scale requirements. As a result, OCP has gradually evolved into a robust community organization, profoundly impacting the entire IT industry. Key technologies such as the OCP I/O module specification and OAM architecture have been widely adopted and recognized, with the OCP I/O module becoming a standard in data centers alongside NVIDIA HGX and OAM architectures. While other CSPs like AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle have not fully adopted OCP architectures, they have referenced relevant specifications, leading to many "OCP-like" product developments.
According to Ramble, with the growth of standard OCP products and OCP-like products, OCP has become one of the most influential standard-setting organizations worldwide, spanning from upstream IC companies like Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA, as well as midstream CSPs, ODMs, SIs, and downstream component suppliers. This is one of the main reasons Chenbro decided to participate in the OCP summit this year. Previously, Chenbro primarily assisted its clients in attending and showcasing products. This year, however, the company aims to establish itself as a key player in the industry. In addition to showcasing its new generation of server chassis solutions at the OCP Summit, Chenbro is also planning to join the OCP Committee to make a more significant contribution to the IT industry.
DC-MHS and MGX: Converging in the OCP ecosystem
DC-MHS was one of the critical technologies Chenbro presented at the summit. This technology aims to establish open standards and build up a flexible and scalable ecosystem to meet modern data centers' growing demands in computing, transmission, and storage. The development of DC-MHS can be traced back to early standards like ATX and SSI, which addressed general-purpose requirements in a more efficient hardware environment.
Since 2010, the SSI specification has struggled to meet the demands of high-performance data centers, prompting the industry to explore various proprietary specifications. However, as the industry's needs converged, more companies began to focus on open standards, ultimately forming the preliminary framework for DC-MHS in 2020.
Chenbro collaborated with Intel to develop the first DC-MHS proof-of-concept (POC) platform and worked with numerous ODMs and SIs to launch various general-purpose computing products based on the platform. Subsequently, AMD also joined the DC-MHS ecosystem, and the involvement of Dell and HPE further accelerated the standard's development and adoption.
The convergence of DC-MHS with the OCP standard has further propelled its growth, enabling the integration of CSP demands and ultimately leading to the creation of the new OCP standard, SDNO. Chenbro now fully supports SDNO and is actively collaborating with leading IC companies, OEM manufacturers, and system integrators to promote the adoption and development of this new standard.
In addition, Chenbro's MGX products for AI applications are closely aligned with the OCP SDNO standard, forming a complementary relationship with DC-MHS. Whether it's DC-MHS or MGX, both continuously strengthen their connections with OCP. By leveraging this ecosystem platform, Chenbro is driving the diversification of data center solutions.
"While companies may start from different points, they often face similar challenges and issues, leading to similar solutions," Ramble explained. "These commonalities can be consolidated into an industry consensus, ultimately forming standardized solutions. This is why now is the best time to proactively promote key products based on the DC-MHS and MGX platforms, raising market awareness and bringing these solutions to a broader range of potential customers."
Embracing robust architectures to create a structured and predictable future
The development of DC-MHS is supported by two major specifications: FLW and DNO. FLW is primarily designed for dual-socket configurations to meet high-performance computing demands, while DNO focuses on single-socket designs aiming to support mainstream applications, especially in scenarios with multiple I/O requirements.
The subsequent launch of SDNO inherits the architectures of FLW and DNO, incorporating more CSP requirements to provide greater flexibility. From DC-MHS to SDNO, both maintain a high degree of interoperability in terms of design philosophy and specifications. For instance, many well-known 1U and 2U general-purpose server products are based on the FLW architecture, featuring high-performance configurations such as "Dual Socket + 32 DIMMs." In contrast, DNO is about half the size of FLW but supports more I/O configurations within that space, making it particularly suitable for GPU application scenarios.
Taking NVIDIA's MGX architecture as an example, the latest product, GB200, is designed based on the DNO architecture. MGX provides CSP customers with server applications in 1U and 2U sizes, such as the NVL72, launched earlier this year, deploying a 1U Compute Tray within a single cabinet, supporting up to 72 B200 chips. The NVL36 extends this to a 2U Compute Tray application. In enterprise applications, MGX offers a 2U standalone model that supports traditional PCIe GPU cards, with configurations of up to four GPUs and supports air-cooled solutions. MGX also offers a 4U model capable of accommodating 8 to 16 PCIe GPU cards, available with both air-cooled and liquid-cooled solutions. The MGX product line covers various configurations, from high-density 1U to 2U and 4U models, with different cooling modes to address multiple application needs.
Ramble emphasized that whether it's DC-MHS or MGX, both are architectures around which Chenbro builds its ecosystems. These architectures support different application scenarios, and it is thanks to these standards and frameworks that the entire industry can develop in a structured and orderly manner. This year, Corona Chen, CEO of Chenbro personally attended the OCP Summit, showcasing the company's commitment to developing these ecosystems alongside upstream and downstream partners, providing better services for end customers, and guiding the future direction of technology.
Chenbro showcases flexible, scalable server designs for AI and data centers at the 2024 OCP Summit
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