Supermicro has claimed its Supermicro 4.0 Datacenter Building Block Solutions (DCBBS) will reduce data center build time from three years to two, while smaller and older facilities could be spun up or transformed in as little as six months.
Speaking on the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call, CEO Charles Liang said that building new AI-ready data centers traditionally takes a long time, but this solution will “significantly improve data centers' time-to-online and cost.”
He added that DCBBS will also support the full integration of AI compute, server, storage, networking, rack, cabling, DLC liquid cooling facility water tower, end-to-end management software, onsite deployment services, and maintenance.
It’s unclear exactly what the solution will consist of and how it will work, but Liang told analysts on the call that “by leveraging our system building block and rack-scale plug and play solutions, we help our customers achieve the best time-to-market advantage with new and performance optimized technologies.”
DCBBS will be available “later this calendar year.“
Elsewhere on the call, Liang said net revenue for the quarter totaled $5.31 billion, up 143 percent year-on-year (YoY). Data center segment revenue was $3.41bn, representing 64 percent of Q4 revenue and 192 percent YoY growth.
However, the company was facing a backlog for its DLC (direct liquid cooling) technology due to a component shortage, and these delays cost the company $800 million during the quarter. Despite the challenges, the company believes that over the next 12 months, 25 – 30 percent of new global data center deployments will use DLC solutions, “with most deployments coming from Supermicro we believe.”
Liang said “Supermicro is powering the largest AI factories around the world today. We believe more and more data centers will be opting for our latest DLC liquid cooling solutions.” Alongside Dell, Supermicro is providing the servers for xAI’s supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee.
He also noted that the company was adding new production provisioning capacity in the US to further boost its DLC business, while Supermicro’s Malaysian plant will be in production from November 2024.
As a result of this anticipated growth in demand for DLC technology and DCBBS expected to ship in high volume later this year, Liang said Supermicro is forecasting next quarter revenue of between $6-7bn.
