Next generation ThinkSystem servers go beyond the data centre

As companies of all sizes continue to work on solving real-world challenges – they require powerful infrastructure solutions to help them gain faster insights and remain competitive. With this new generation of ThinkSystem solutions, Lenovo introduces innovations for real-world workloads including high performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), modeling and simulation, cloud, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and advanced analytics.

“Our next-generation ThinkSystem Server platform delivers a unique balance of performance, security, and efficiency,” said Kamran Amini, Vice President and General Manager of Infrastructure Solutions Platforms, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “With the combination of Lenovo innovation in security, water-cooling technology and as-a-service economics, we enable customers to accelerate and secure a broad range of real-world workloads with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.”

Lenovo puts the ‘smarter’ into infrastructure solutions for data-intensive workloads

Lenovo introduces four new servers, including ThinkSystem SR650 V2, SR630 V2, ST650 V2 and SN550 V2, offering enhanced performance, reliability, flexibility and security to meet mission-critical demands and customer concerns. Leveraging Intel’s 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, this portfolio provides flexibility for the most demanding workloads and the freedom to configure to meet growing business demands:

• ThinkSystem SR650 V2: Ideal for scalability from SMB to large enterprises and managed cloud service providers, the 2U two-socket server is engineered for speed and expansion, with flexible storage and I/O for business-critical workloads. It provides Intel Optane persistent memory 200 series for increased performance and capacity for database and virtual machine deployments, with support for PCIe Gen4 networking to reduce data bottlenecks.
• ThinkSystem SR630 V2: Built for business-critical versatility, the 1U two-socket server features optimized performance and density for hybrid data center workloads such as cloud, virtualization, analytics, computing and gaming.
• ThinkSystem ST650 V2: Built for performance and maximum scalability, the new two-socket mainstream tower server includes the industry’s latest technology in a slimmer chassis (4U) to address highly configurable tower systems that provide support in remote offices or branch offices (ROBO), technology and retail, while optimizing workloads.
• ThinkSystem SN550 V2: Designed for enterprise performance and flexibility in a compact footprint, the newest building block in the Flex System family, this blade server node is optimized for performance, efficiency and security – designed to tackle business-critical workloads such as cloud, server virtualization, databases and
• Looking to the Edge: Coming later this year, Lenovo is expanding its edge computing portfolio with 3^rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, with the introduction of a new highly ruggedized, edge server designed to handle the extreme performance and environmental conditions needed for telecommunications, manufacturing and smarter cities use cases.

Packing Petaflops of Performance on Two Data Center Floor Tiles

Lenovo delivers on the promise of “From Exascale to Everyscale™” with four new performance optimized servers that provide massive computing power in minimal floor space with reduced energy consumption: Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 V2, SD650-N V2, SD630 V2 and SR670 V2. This new generation of ThinkSystem servers are designed to fully exploit PCIe Gen4 which doubles I/O bandwidth¹ for network cards, NVMe devices and GPU/accelerators providing balanced system performance between the CPU and the I/O. Each system leverages Lenovo Neptune™ cooling to drive greater performance and energy efficiency. Lenovo offers a breadth of air and liquid cooling technologies to meet any customer deployment needs:

• ThinkSystem SD650 V2: Based on industry-acclaimed fourth generation, Lenovo Neptune™ cooling technology, utilises a highly reliable copper loop and cold plate architecture removing up to 90% of the systems heat². The ThinkSystem SD650 V2 is built to tackle compute-intensive workloads such as HPC, AI, cloud, grid and advanced analytics.
• ThinkSystem SD650-N V2: Expanding the Lenovo Neptune™ platform, direct water-cooling technology for GPUs, this server combines two 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with four NVIDIA® A100 GPUs to deliver maximum performance in a dense 1U package. A rack of Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650-N V2 delivers enough compute performance to place in the top 300 of the TOP500 list of supercomputers³.
• ThinkSystem SD630 V2: This ultra-dense, ultra-agile​ server handles twice the workloads per server rack unit of rack space vs. traditional 1U servers. By leveraging Lenovo Neptune™ Thermal Transfer Modules (TTMs), the SD630 V2 supports processors up to 250W, driving 1.5 times the performance of the previous generation in the same rack space⁴.
• ThinkSystem SR670 V2: This highly versatile acceleration platform is designed for HPC and AI training workloads, supporting the vast NVIDIA Ampere datacenter GPU portfolio. With six base configurations that support up to eight small or large form factor GPUs, the SR670 V2 allows customers the flexibility to configure PCIe or SXM form factors. One of those configurations features a Lenovo Neptune™ liquid to air heat exchanger that provides the benefits of liquid cooling without the adding plumbing.

Lenovo continues to partner with Intel to bring performance optimized systems to customers around the world, helping solve humanity’s greatest challenges. One example is the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, a world-renowned research computing center. Lenovo and Intel delivered new systems to KIT for a new cluster, improving performance 17 times compared to their previous system.

“KIT is excited that our new Lenovo supercomputer will be among the first in the world to run on the new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The liquid-cooled Lenovo Neptune system delivers the highest performance, while also being the most energy efficient, making it the clear choice,” said Jennifer Buchmueller Head of Department, Scientific Computing and Simulation at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

Comprehensive Approach to Security

Lenovo’s ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile portfolio includes enterprise-class security features, leveraging Lenovo ThinkShield standards. Lenovo ThinkShield is a comprehensive approach to enhancing security in all products from end-to-end, including supply chain and manufacturing processes. This enables customers to be confident that they have a strong security foundation. As part of the solutions announced today, Lenovo enhances ThinkShield security capabilities including:

• New standards-compliant NIST SP800-193 Platform Firmware Resiliency (PFR) with Root of Trust (RoT) Hardware to provide key platform subsystem protection against cyberattacks, unauthorized firmware updates and corruption.
• Discrete security processor testing validated by leading third-party security firms – available for customer review, providing unprecedented transparency and assurance.

Customers can also count on innovation in intelligent systems management with Lenovo xClarity and Lenovo Intelligent Computing Orchestration (LiCO), to enable organizations to easily administer IT infrastructure from anywhere in the world. All of Lenovo’s infrastructure solutions are supported by Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure Services delivering as-a-service economics with cloud-like flexibility.