Barcelona and Mobile World Congress set the stage for a series of Fierce Network podcasts and interviews, with Supermicro executives Mory Lin and Vik Malyala joining us for this episode.
Mory Lin, VP of IoT, Embedded & Edge Computing, delved into the company’s Open RAN endeavors. Here, he explains how Supermicro is leveraging its data center expertise to develop cost-effective and telco-friendly hardware solutions for the Open RAN ecosystem. Additionally, Mory highlights Supermicro's approach to AI at the edge, providing flexible solutions tailored to different workloads and form factors.
In part two, Vik Malyala, President and MD for EMEA, talks about Supermicro's explosive growth, attributing it to the industry's technology transition and increasing demand for compute, storage, and networking solutions. He discusses the company’s investments in building block-based products and green compute initiatives to optimize performance and power efficiency. A key focus area for Supermicro is AI, with Vik noting the vast potential for AI applications across various verticals such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. Here, he emphasizes the need for efficient compute and storage capabilities to support AI model development, training and inference, especially at the edge. Supermicro is also looking at accelerated computing platforms, working closely with partners like Intel to bring the latest technologies to customers and help them accelerate their workloads quickly.
Tune in to listen to the full discussion with both experts!
All right. Well I'm joined now by Mory Lin, the VP for IoT Embedded and Edge Computing is Supermicro. Mory, thanks for joining us here at Fierce Network. Thank you, Mory. Let's start with a big topic this year, open ram. So we've been talking about it for a while, but it looks like this year really might be when it comes to some maturity, we're seeing it broad scale. How do you see the next steps for the Open RAM ecosystem? What do they look like?
Mory Lin:
From the very beginning, we Supermicro have lots of the data center innovation acknowledge and a few years ago because of this open run architecture, so there's a possibility for the X 86 platform, how we are being selected as a choice to help the radios network to make all this job workload right. We also recognize that Intel offer a lot of the support from the flex spread level and also with Accelerator Insight. This is a long year's journey. We realized just using the data center computing technology, it's night enough because machine itself in the Radio SN world, it has to be compliant to those feature requirements, performance requirements and we invest a lot. And then we realized to make this machine become very friendly for the telco workload, innovations on the computing and also system level design become a very loaded steps. And then back to the question you asked very beginning, what's the next steps we found we have to make our highway become more cost competitive and also how it needs to be very friendly, allow the building block solution continue to help the operator and customers because of this, we actually make it this year and then we continue transform inside the machine without change too much, such as we have a product able to bring down the networking chip set altogether like the 1230 5G four in a two year short depth compact machine for DU applications.
And we will continue invest on the kind of things, make it easier off the shelf for the operator and also our Echo partners for the telco business.
Alejandro Pinero:
Alright Mory, talking about AI and the Edge specifically. We're seeing a lot of growth in the amount of data that's being processed at the edge, double digit growth. How is Supermicro leveraging AI at the edge to submit tool?
Mory Lin:
I think first of all AI is very popular being while used in a data center because of the performance and the density consideration. But when there is a combination workflow at the age and the phone factor wise need to be reconsidered again such as the how many computing power we have to allocate together with the GPU altogether for the AI. And because of this, I think Intel brings a lot of the good choices at the age at this moment right now, certain customers, they can use the instructions set provided by the Intel technology to run without the GPU and those workload could be used as CPU course do the job, but there's also the possibility accelerates by the Intel GPU as well.
And then we have this different core factor to embrace those double with the GPU from Intel because the edge computing different form factors still require lots of the workload handled in a small box. So we look at this kind of inferencing possibility at the age possible by supporting the different phone factor. For instance, like if the machine itself have to mount it non rack level environment, that means machine itself have to be probably on the wall. We have that type of products and using the intel latest generation CPU and with the GPU together, and I believe this a AI topic, it will just have a more demand to process more data. So, it's not just happening in the data center for large language modeling, it's also possible run very fast at edge for the inferencing. So, both will be the strong demand and we will continue deliver different phone figure to support them. Thank you.
Alejandro Pinero:
Alright, thank you Mory. Appreciate it.
Alejandro Pinero:
Alright, well I'm here with Vik Malyala, President and MD for EMEA at Supermicro. Thanks for joining us here at Fierce Network.
Vik Malyala:
Happy to be here.
Alejandro Pinero:
Absolutely. Well another year at MWC, we've been reporting about Supermicro the exclusive growth you've been seeing in sales, significant growth in market value, what's been driving this growth recently and what's resonating with your clients?
Vik Malyala:
Certainly exciting time for Supermicro as well as for customers because of the technology transition and how the industry is evolving and having us an opportunity to be a part of it, there is a lot of new technology that's coming, especially the explosive growth and demand in compute storage and networking aspects of it. So, whether it's a standard compute or accelerated compute, we have all these platforms that we are emphasizing on and thanks to our building block strategy, we are able to build this latest and greatest technology. Especially working closely with partners such as Intel and others. We are able to bring this technology to customers and first and foremost, they're actually having access to the latest technology, and two, they're able to accelerate their workloads quickly and it's helping everyone. So, I'm super excited about what's happening in the industry right now.
Alejandro Pinero:
Absolutely. And of course I've been walking the floor here at MWC. AI, big topic of conversation, no different as Supermicro. Clearly you guys are building solutions to leverage AI for the telco market. Can you tell me a little bit about how you see AI evolving? What are some of the key trends and use cases and how Supermicro is working to incorporate that into solutions that you're offering?
Vik Malyala:
Yeah, certainly a lot of growth for us is coming due to AI, but the way I look at it is we are barely scratching the surface. If you take a look at the way the models are getting developed, they require a lot of compute and associated storage not to go with it. And as people start quoting more applications and looking at different verticals, whether it's a healthcare, whether it's education, whether it is media and entertainment, whether it's inferencing at the edge. So, there are models that are being developed, models that need to be trained, that requires a lot of compute. But what is more relevant even for the industry here right now we are at MWC, there is a lot of applications that require these things to be running at the edge. So Supermicro is very, very ideally positioned where we are dominating in the core, I would call it the data center space, where at the same time taking it to the edge, whether it is embedded or edge or telco products, we are supporting all these accelerators as a part of it.
And that actually helps in customers adopting it and providing better user experience. So, in the market wise today versus what is next 2, 3, 4 years, we are investing a lot and we are coming up with more building block based products that is going to take the performance and efficiencies to the next level. And as things are consuming more power, we are also looking a lot in terms of making it more optimized in terms of efficiency because world that one thing we are short of is power. So we need to make sure that whatever the available power, we are using it more efficiently. So, we are investing a lot on our green compute. So, growth is there. Green compute is going to be an important part. We are investing in both of it to ensure that we are getting the right products for our customers. So, definitely a very good time to be here.
Alejandro Pinero:
Amazing. Thank you so much Vik. Appreciate your time.
Vik Malyala:
Thank you.