'World's smallest' Nvidia AI server launched but barely anyone noticed — ASRock's MECAI is powered by the GH200 Grace Superchip but is so small you could possibly put it under a desk

MECAI-GH200
(Image credit: ASRock Rack)

ASRock Rack, the subsidiary of ASRock that offers servers, workstations, and other data-center hardware, has unveiled a new space-saving solution for effectively deploying AI in edge environments.

Its MECAI-GH200 is claimed to be the world's smallest server to house Nvidia’s new GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip. The significant - yet little noticed - launch took place at MWC 2024.

The MECAI-GH200 measures just 450 x 445 x 87mm, so it’s small enough to fit under a desk, but it’s no slouch when it comes to performance. Nvidia’s GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip combines the NVIDIA Grace CPU and Hopper AI GPU architectures with an NVLink interconnect between them, and it’s super-fast, as recent tests show.

Meeting demand for generative AI

Announcing the 2U short-depth MGX server, Hunter Chen, Vice President at ASRock Rack, said, "We aspire to bring the benefits of AI to everywhere. To achieve this goal, we are committed to deliver the most dependable server hardware solutions in various form factors for different scenarios.”

Ivan Goldwasser, Director of Data Center CPUs at NVIDIA, praised ASRock Rack's efforts to meet the surging demand for generative AI. He said, "By leveraging this innovative platform with integrated memory technology, ASRock Rack is equipped to deliver an impressive server line-up with leading performance and memory bandwidth to suit a variety of applications. This aligns to our mission of delivering performance without compromise."

ASRock Rack also showcased its latest barebones and server motherboards for Intel, AMD, and Ampere processors at MWC. One of the highlights was the SIENAD8UD-2L2Q server board, which supports AMD EPYC 8004 series processors and comes equipped with dual 25Gb SFP28 ports.

There’s no word on pricing or availability on the MECAI-GH200 yet, but it should be able to buy some time this summer.

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Wayne Williams
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Wayne Williams is a freelancer writing news for TechRadar Pro. He has been writing about computers, technology, and the web for 30 years. In that time he wrote for most of the UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.

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