In 2024, the semiconductor sector will face several major changes. At the forefront of these changes are innovations in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI server supply chains. DIGITIMES will spotlight these transformations at the “2024 Next-Gen Intelligence Symposium” on November 3, 2023. The event will feature insights from DIGITIMES’ senior analysts and industry experts from Supermicro, with the aim to offer a deep understanding of Asia’s supply chain dynamics and the evolving tech landscape.
Alok Kumar Srivastav, a senior solutions manager at Supermicro, will speak at the event. He’s mainly responsible for businesses related to AI, machine learning, and HPC. He will discuss how AI is at the tipping point of transforming industries in his keynote titled “Ushering in a New Era of AI with Modern Building Blocks.”
In a recent interview with DIGITIMES Asia, Srivastav discussed the fundamental modern building blocks that are enabling AI, what industries are already adopting AI, balancing between key partners like Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, and how AI will affect the server/infrastructure industry and beyond in the future.
The digital era is the cornerstone of the AI
Srivastav pointed out during the interview that the key technologies pushing AI into a new era are digitalization, storage, and accelerated computing, and Supermicro’s solutions cover all of its customers.
All of these are related to the one true foundation of AI: digital data. The one requirement for AI to work is a well-trained model, and a well-trained model needs a lot of digital data.
The digitalization helps fulfill the first step of this process. The recent digital explosion meant that we were creating a lot more data. In fact, according to Srivastav, over 90% of existing data in the world was generated in the last 2-3 years.
Once the digital data is created, Storage technology is mature enough to handle this massive amount of new data accordingly at different stages of its life cycle.
The final and most crucial is accelerated computing capability. Advancements in modern computing capabilities have enabled corporations to process and convert complex digital data into meaningful insights.
A cross-industry phenomenon
As with the industries that are looking to or have already adopted AI, Srivastav listed a long list of industries that are already under Supermicro’s umbrella. These industries include automotive (esp. EVs), cloud computing (that caters to specific types of workloads), energy (oil/gas), financial, healthcare, higher education, media and entertainment, the public sector, HPCs, telecommunications, and more.
While Srivastav declined to name a specific company, he ensured that these are all major corporations that are leaders in their respective industries. When it comes to volume, he mentioned that because of the demand for new infrastructure due to the emergence of cloud computing, almost all these major corporations are procuring “thousands of computing units from Supermicro.”
Achieving a balance between key partners
One of the more interesting parts of Supermicro’s business is that it’s agnostic and works very closely with key partners like Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, companies that are actively competing against each other in the same sector. When asked about this, Srivastav admitted that keeping pace with the innovation and progress of all three companies is not an easy task.
“Supermicro’s DNA is first-to-market, and we want to be first for all of our state-of-the-art products and all of our customers,” he stated.
‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’
Regarding the future direction of the industry, Srivastav pointed out that advancements in AI technology have resulted in lower error rates and have allowed more and more corporations to become more accepting of this technology.
All of this will lead to something they referred to as “the fourth industrial revolution.” This revolution will be powered by two main technologies: AI and IoT. The change and impact of this revolution will be so profound that it will affect all industries in the world, be it design or manufacturing. It’ll no longer be “if” you want to adopt AI but rather “when and how soon” to adopt AI to survive in the modern marketplace.
Srivastav stated that AI will become like electricity; so widely adopted and accepted that you won’t even question its existence. You will come to accept it as part of your day-to-day life. In fact, there are already many instances of AI use in our daily lives (such as autocomplete) that we just don’t realize. We are already consumers of AI.
