A Brief History of Supermicro
Supermicro, a San Jose-based computer hardware company, was founded in 1987 by Charles Liang with the goal of providing high-quality, low cost motherboards to OEMs and other customers. The company’s first CEO was Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former president of Yahoo! Inc. In 2014, Supermicro generated about US$4 billion in revenue for a top-line profit margin that consistently yielded more than ten percent.
In 2014, Headquartered in San Jose.
Supermicro was founded in 1987 with the name Supermicrom Computer Inc. by Charles Liang and Stanford University professor David Chang. The company started as a project to build an Intel-based motherboard for Sun Microsystems’ server products. In 1989, the company changed its name to Supermicro Computer Inc. In 1990, it moved its headquarters to San Jose and began shipping motherboards made by third-party suppliers.
In 1991, the company’s first year of profitability, it was listed on NASDAQ and a year later expanded distribution channels by selling products directly through end users and OEMs. By 1994, it had a 40% market share of servers sold in Taiwan. In 1994, the company changed its name to Supermicro Technologies Inc.
In 1997, it began making its own motherboards and expansion cards for IBM computers.
In 1998, it became the primary supplier for Dell Computer Corporation’s PowerEdge 2000 and 3000 series products. The following year, it announced a new board design called the DRS-600 that used Intel’s chipsets with a cache memory on board. It was later replaced by Supermicro’s M-series boards based on Intel’s Core2/Pentium 4 and Xeon processors as well as custom multi-core chipsets from Broadcom Corp..
In 2000, the company’s business model changed when it began utilizing ASI Semiconductor Inc.’s memory modules for its motherboards; in 2002, Supermicro shipped its first DIMMs as a customer solution. Also that year, the company’s sales doubled to US$110 million.
In 2004, Supermicro became the exclusive motherboard provider of IBM’s Power 750 and Power 6000 systems. In 2005, its revenues reached US$236 million while it posted an increase in net income from US$5 million to $9 million.
In 2006, it launched its E-series motherboards with six-core Intel chipsets and up to 12 gigabytes of memory on board. These motherboards were used in the BladeCenter chassis from IBM, and it became a primary supplier for Sun Microsystems.
In 2007, the company introduced its SuperBlade mainboard for blade servers and storage systems based on Intel’s Xeon processor. The following year, Supermicro announced its new MicroBlade platform, a new small footprint form factor designed to reduce cost and increase the scalability of blade server configurations. In 2009, it acquired Silicon Valley-based Serverworks Inc., a company that produced sub-components such as network interface cards and power supplies that could be used in Supermicro products. Also in 2009, it purchased California-based Integrated Computer Solutions Inc., which was previously owned by HP and Apple Inc..
In 2011, the company became the primary supplier for HP ProLiant and IBM systems by replacing its Discrete Network Interface Cards (NDC) with integrated Intel network interface cards. It has also become a primary supplier of Cisco’s Nexus 7000 series products. That same year, Supermicro was acquired by Legend Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based investment firm led by TSMC founder Morris Chang and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak. In 2012, it sold its server chipsets operations to Marvell Technology Group, Inc. for $117 million. It discontinued the manufacture of its own motherboards that year as well.
Supermicro has been a supplier to various companies including Apple Inc., Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. In 2010, it received an award for Best of Show for its UCS P2-series rackmount servers at that year’s Super Computing 2011 event in Berlin. That same year, it partnered with NASA and Lockheed Martin to build the lab located at Boise State University and the U.S. Naval Air Station in Meridian where they conducted research into cloud computing; they entered a partnership agreement with SolarCity Corp.