AI Infrastructure Shifts as Disk-Based Servers Resurge at ASUS Tech Event
At ASUS AI Tech 2026 in Seoul, South Korea, attendees saw various storage servers, including ones for disk and NVMe, highlighting a shift in AI infrastructure. Storage is becoming increasingly important for AI clusters, with speakers emphasizing this trend.
The use of disk-based servers has seen a resurgence due to the cost-effectiveness of storing large amounts of data compared to NVMe. ASUS showcased storage-focused servers like the VS320D-RS26N for high-performance storage. Additionally, they displayed the XA P2N-E2 MGX platform, which supports two NVIDIA Vera CPUs and is designed as a more general-purpose compute platform.
This platform can be combined with PCIe GPUs like the NVIDIA RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell or RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition. These GPUs are designed for high single-thread performance and memory bandwidth.
A panel discussion at ASUS AI Tech 2026 featured representatives from Crusoe, Aleria, ASUS, and IBM. The conversation centered around sovereign and enterprise AI trends, with Eric Leandri of Aleria discussing the implementation of agentic AI for portfolio companies. Craig McKenna of IBM highlighted the challenges of going into practical implementations, while David Fu of ASUS spoke about customers' needs for efficient deployment of new AI generations.