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4.04

Who makes motherboards, cpu trays, switch trays for AI data centers

The non-GPU trays in a rack — CPU-only compute trays, host motherboards and the switch trays carrying scale-up switch silicon — built by the same board makers as the GPU trays.

This part covers the trays that round out a rack-scale system alongside the GPU baseboard (4.03): CPU-only compute trays for control and orchestration nodes, conventional server motherboards, and switch trays that carry the scale-up switch silicon (3.01) linking GPU trays together. The same ODM tier that builds GPU baseboards builds these, joined by motherboard specialists who don't necessarily compete for GPU-tray business. AI racks need more of this category than a conventional data center rack: a rack-scale cabinet carries dedicated switch trays purely to fan out the scale-up fabric, a tray type that barely existed before rack-scale GPU systems. For investors, this is a lower-margin, higher-volume counterpart to the GPU baseboard — less differentiated, more competitive — so the interesting question is less "who wins" and more whether a builder's exposure here dilutes or complements its GPU-tray economics.

AI delta: Rack-scale GPU systems require dedicated switch trays purely to fan out the scale-up fabric between GPU trays, a tray category that has little equivalent in conventional servers.

Appears at:Enterprise / small coloLarge colo / hyperscale buildingAI campusGW-class campus· cooling:any — switch-tray count scales with the number of GPU trays and the scale-up fabric's radix, so it grows faster than headcount-style server metrics as racks get larger.

Companies on this part (5)

CompanyRoleOwnershipTickerPrice1dConfidenceNote
ASRock Rackmanufacturerpublic3515.TW219 TWD+0.5%inferred
ASUSmanufacturerpublic2357.TW957 TWD-1.5%inferred
Gigabytemanufacturerpublic2376.TW348 TWD+0.4%inferredthe same ODMs plus
MiTAC (Tyan)manufacturerpublic3706.TW91.30 TWD-0.3%inferred
MSImanufacturerpublic2377.TW144 TWD-0.7%inferred

Who competes here

The same table read the other way: every company above competes for motherboards, cpu trays, switch trays sockets. Confidence tags matter — an inferred placement is a lead, not a confirmed rivalry.

Nearby parts

Sources: placements without a source URL come from the taxonomy seed and are tagged accordingly. How this data is builtMarkdown · JSON