William Wu Says It's Great To Give Customers More Options For Servers

An executive at Penguin Computing said the high-performance computing system builder is seeing an "all-time high" in interest for servers running on AMD's EPYC processors, with many customers requesting quotes for AMD-based systems as a potential alternative to Intel-based systems.

"Practically every single customer that we have when we're doing quotations, they are all looking for an AMD equivalency […], so the interest is at an all-time high," said William Wu, vice president of hardware products at Penguin Computing, based in Fremont, Calif. "And so we're very excited to see how many customers would actually make the change."

[Related: How AMD Plans To Win Over Solution Providers With EPYC 'Rome' ]

Penguin Computing, which also provides artificial intelligence and data center solutions, updated its AMD-based Atlus server platform in August with a new line of servers running on the chipmaker's second-generation EPYC Rome processors. The company is also selling the new processors, also known as the EPYC 7002 series, as a drop-in upgrade for existing Atlus servers.

"Ultimately, it's great to give customers an option to choose from as opposed to just always Intel over the last half decade," Wu, a seven-year company veteran said.

Founded in 1999, Penguin Computing, which partners with both AMD and Intel, provides Linux-based custom servers for high-performance computing and AI applications to large enterprise customers, including NASA, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, according to the company's website.

The company's Atlus server refresh was announced in tandem with AMD's Aug. 7 launch of its EPYC Rome processors, which the chipmaker claims can provide a 25-50 percent lower total cost of ownership over Intel's Xeon Scalable processors, thanks to performance and price-performance advantages.

In an interview with CRN, Wu discussed EPYC Rome's potential impact on the data center market, how AMD's first-generation EPYC Naples processors prepared enterprises for Rome, what Penguin Computing is bringing to the table with its internal capabilities and why one particular feature in the new Rome processors could be a game-changer for certain workloads.

What follows is an edited transcript based on Wu's conversation with CRN.

