Supermicro has announced its first workstation based on AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro processor. The new system can pack a CPU with up to 64 cores, up to 2TB of RAM, and up to four double-wide graphics cards or accelerators. The machine is designed for AI/DL, digital content creation, and engineering simulations.
Historically, AMD has been quite keen on winning designs with server makers, but when it comes to workstations from professional suppliers, the company has never been truly profound. Perhaps because high-end/corporate workstations is not exactly a high-volume business and spending resources on winning servers is always more fruitful. Yet, with its Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3000WX-series, AMD clearly wants to enter this market. The Supermicro A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT is the industry's second workstation based on AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3000WX-series processor after Lenovo's ThinkStation P620 machine and it actually has an edge over its only rival as it supports more dual-slot PCIe 4.0 x16 cards, according to its manufacturer.
The A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT workstation is based on the AMD WRX80 platform with all of its advantages, such as an eight-channel memory subsystem that supports up to 2TB of DDR4-3200 SDRAM with or without ECC as well as 128 usable PCIe 4.0 lanes. The M12SWA-TF motherboard that powers the workstation carries six PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, four M.2-2280/22110 slots for SSDs, two U.2 sockets, one GbE port (Intel I210AT), one 10GbE connector (Marvell AQC113C), an ASpeed AST2600 baseboard management controller, a TPM 2.0 header, multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A & Type-C ports, and a 7.1-audio codec.
The machine itself measures 535×222×573 mm and is equipped with an up to 2000W 80Plus Platinum-certified PSU, so it will handle virtually all combinations of AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs with any graphics cards, compute accelerators, SSDs, and memory modules available today. Meanwhile, since the A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT is listed as 'coming soon', Supermicro does not disclose which add-in cards and storage devices it will offer with the system.
The manufacturer has not yet disclosed pricing of its A+ SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT machines, but it is logical to expect its MSRP to be comparable to that of Lenovo's ThinkStation P620.
