- X220 Leverages Supermicro CloudDC and SuperServer Systems for Korean Data Centers
March 2, 2023 – SAPEON (CEO Soojung Ryu, www.sapeon.com), a global AI semiconductor company, announced that its AI semiconductor, SAPEON X220, completed the Supermicro server validation evaluation and has been validated as an AI semiconductor that can be installed on the Supermicro’s SYS-620C-TN12R server which was validated for SAPEON X220 Compact and the SYS-220GP-TNR server was validated for SAPEON X220 Enterprise.
SAPEON has developed NPU (Neural Processing Unit), an AI semiconductor source technology, with 100% internal technology from hardware to software, and is strengthening its targeting of the largest data center inference service semiconductor market and autonomous driving semiconductor market among AI semiconductors. In particular, it developed and succeeded in commercializing the AI semiconductor (X220) for data centers for the first time in Korea, and is gradually expanding the scope of commercial services for the AI market.
SAPEON has become the first manufacturer in Korea to complete validation tests for both its Enterprise and Compact cards. Supermicro’s servers were specifically leveraged as they were the best fit for the SAPEON X220.
Each server manufacturer – including Supermicro – tests with their own validation standards, Supermicro is renowned for having rigorous validation procedures to verify high quality. SAPEON obtained server validation for a total of two products, having completed validation for the X220 Compact in 2022 and the X220 Enterprise in 2023. The X220 Enterprise boasts twice the performance of the X220 Compact and has completed the most demanding thermal test in validation. SAPEON is the first domestic Korean company to commercialize and receive server validation for two products, and is recognized for its technology and quality.
CEO Soojung Ryu said, “The X220, which secured the highest competency in the industry for us, has reached a monumental milestone by being validated as a server semiconductor by Supermicro. SAPEON, as a leading global AI semiconductor company, plans to actively supply X220 in line with market demand and continue to innovate to offer products with significantly improved performance.”
Wally Liaw/Co-Founder, SVP, Business Development of Supermicro said, “Supermicro has worked closely with SAPEON to support that the X220 can be optimized for its CloudDC and SuperServer system. Supermicro servers are all-in-one rackmount designs and tool-less configurations are ideal for cloud data centers, and with SAPEON X220 AI semiconductor can increase data center servers’ performance.”
SAPEON X220 was introduced in 2016 to improve SK Group’s internal infrastructure and was applied to Korea’s first artificial intelligence service ’NUGU', SK shieldus’ intelligent video solution ‘T-view’, and AI-based media quality improvement solution ‘SUPERNOVA’. Since its spin-off in April 2022, SAPEON has released the results of objective performance results to commercialize it outside of SK Group. According to the MLPerf Inference v2.1 benchmark, SAPEON X220 was recognized for its excellence by recording 2.4 times to 4.6 times higher performance (measuring data center performance) than other competing products, and showed more than twice the power efficiency in terms of performance per power consumption (maximum power consumption).
SAPEON jointly built an NPU Farm at NHN Pangyo Data Center in October last year, and in December, it implemented fashion-specific AI service ‘Virtual Try-on’ on SAPEON’s AI semiconductor, ‘X220’. In addition, SAPEON and SK Telecom is promoting various artificial intelligence joint research with the University of Toronto, the world’s leading research institute in the artificial intelligence field, based on the NPU farm to be built.
About SAPEON Inc.
SAPEON is an independent corporation targeting the global market with SK Telecom’s self-developed AI semiconductor SAPEON is the first result of cooperation among the three companies of SK Telecom’s SK ICT Alliance with SK Square and SK Hynix. For global business, SAPEON’s headquarters is a US corporation, SAPEON Inc. in Santa Clara, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. SAPEON Korea, a Korean company, oversees businesses in Korea and Asia. The SAPEON chip is the first Korean non-memory semiconductor for data centers that executes large-scale calculations necessary for realizing AI services at high speed and low power. For more information about SAPEON and its products, visit https://www.sapeon.com/, LinkedIn (sapeon), Facebook (@SAPEON.Korea), Instagram (sapeonkorea), and YouTube (sapeon).
Media contact SAPEON Korea Inc. | hyunok.yoo@sapeon.com