Supermicro is a leading supplier of Solaris and Linux-based Servers, Storage, Workstations, Rackmount Systems, and Networking products.
The Company offers scalable solutions to meet its customers’ requirements. Supermicro delivers cutting-edge technology solutions for workgroups as well as enterprise-class servers.
The Company’s products are widely used in mission-critical applications such as content delivery networks (CDN), cloud computing, web hosting, and storage infrastructures which require high performance, low latency, and high availability across multiple tiers of data centers. Supermicro helps enterprise customers build their data centers with every layer of their infrastructure based on open standards that can be integrated into any existing or emerging environment or business model.
The Company offers a wide range of products, including high-performance servers, storage systems, workstations, and rackmount systems. Super Micro offers open specifications that ensure its products fit into any data center environment and can be integrated into any existing or emerging network fabric.
The Company’s products are available in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia Pacific, Russia, and Brazil through a worldwide network of distributors and resellers. Supermicro is headquartered in Taipei. The Company has offices located in North America (USA), Taiwan (Taipei), Europe (London), Taiwan (Kaohsiung), and China(Shanghai).
“Supermicro Business Unit”
Supermicro Business Units (SBU) is a series of server products targeted at entry, midrange, and high-end market segments. All SBU products have their brand name (ex: Supermicro X11SDR, Supermicro X10SATR).
James Wan founded the Company on September 18, 1999, in Taipei after he left the motherboard-making Company ASUS. Later the Company moved to California. The Company’s logo is based on the number 11 from his first name James and vertical rows of 1’s representing individual servers connected. In 2008 the Company’s server business unit was separated from Supermicro Inc. and was established as its own Company, Super Micro Computer, Inc.(SMCI). The successor of Supermicro Computer, Inc. is Super Micro Computer, Inc.(SMCD). In 2016 the Company’s software division was separated and established as its own Company, Supermicro Inc.(SMIN).
In 2014 the US FBI raided several Supermicro offices.
The article also mentions an FBI “Flash memo” that describes a Chinese military unit selling servers to U.S. data center customers containing malicious hardware bugs. It is not clear from the leaked documents if the FBI examined any of these servers. Still, they intended to warn U.S. data center customers to remove Supermicro servers (of unknown origin) from their data centers.
The Company was founded in 1999 by James Hsuan-Tien “Jimmy” Wan and Frank Hsu in Taipei, Taiwan. The Company’s first product was a SCSI RAID controller for ATA hard disks, released in 2000.
The same year the Company moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley, Milpitas, California, and changed its name from Super Micro Computer Corporation to Supermicro Corporation. In 2001 the Company released its first motherboard with an onboard LSI SAS1068 controller, an Intel Xeon processor, and DDR 333 SDRAM, also called the Super Blade Server Chassis (SBSC). The SBSC marked the first use of the Intel Xeon processor in a Supermicro server motherboard.
In 2002 the Company released its first motherboard with an onboard LSI SAS1061 controller, a dual Intel Pentium III processor, and DDR 266 SDRAM, also called the Super Blade Server Chassis (SBSC). The same year Supermicro introduced its X11-based Server Chassis, which includes 1U, 2U, and 3U chassis. Later that year, the Company started manufacturing server motherboards for NetraTek’s products. That year the Company also introduced its first mATX motherboards with an LSI SAS1061 controller and a Socket Intel Pentium III processor.
In 2003 the Company released its first server motherboard with onboard Nvidia Co-Processor, Xeon processors, and DDR 333 SDRAM, also called the SBSC-3/E (Extreme) Server Chassis. The same year, Supermicro started manufacturing AMD Athlon 64 F.X. processor server boards. That year the Company also began manufacturing servers for NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS graphics processing unit (GPU).
