‘World’s smallest’ Nvidia AI server launched, but hardly anyone noticed – ASRock’s MECAI is powered by the GH200 Grace Superchip, but is so small you could conceivably put it under a desk
ASRock Rack, ASRock’s subsidiary offering servers, workstations and other data center hardware, has unveiled a new space-saving solution for effectively deploying AI in edge environments.
The MECAI-GH200 is claimed to be the smallest server in the world with Nvidia’s new GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip installed. The important – but little noticed – launch took place at MWC 2024.
The MECAI-GH200 measures just 450 x 445 x 87mm, so it’s small enough to fit under a desk, but it’s no slouch when it comes to performance. Nvidia’s GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip combines the NVIDIA Grace CPU and Hopper AI GPU architectures with an NVLink connection between them, and is super fast, as recent tests show.
Meeting the demand for generative AI
Announcing the 2U short-depth MGX server, Hunter Chen, Vice President at ASRock Rack said: “We aim to bring the benefits of AI everywhere. To achieve this goal, we are committed to delivering the most reliable server hardware solutions in different form factors for different scenarios.”
Ivan Goldwasser, director of data center CPUs at NVIDIA, praised ASRock Rack’s efforts to meet the rising demand for generative AI. He said: “Leveraging this innovative platform with integrated memory technology, ASRock Rack is equipped to deliver an impressive server offering with industry-leading performance and memory bandwidth for a variety of applications. This aligns with our mission to deliver performance without compromises.”
ASRock Rack also showed off its latest barebones and server motherboards for Intel, AMD and Ampere processors at MWC. One of the highlights was the SIENAD8UD-2L2Q server board, which supports AMD EPYC 8004 series processors and features dual 25Gb SFP28 ports.
There’s no word yet on pricing or availability for the MECAI-GH200, but it should buy some time this summer.