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Sharp Officially Enters AI Server Business, Begins Accepting Orders in Japan

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On September 15th, Sharp Corporation of Japan officially announced it will enter the AI server business by accepting orders for AI servers equipped with NVIDIA technology, officially entering the AI server business.

Starting on September 15th, Sharp began accepting AI orders from corporations, local governments, research institutions, data center operators, and other customers, in Japan only. Ahead of its planned commercial launch in its fiscal-year 2027, Sharp also aims to address the growing demand for AI infrastructure driven by the proliferation of generative AI. 

The first Sharp AI product available for order is the AI Server for Enterprise Workloads (NVIDIA RTX Pro Server). Sharp also plans to begin accepting orders for the AI Server for Large-Scale Training and Inference (NVIDIA HGX System) at a later date

In developing its AI server business, Sharp is expanding its sales structure as well as its operation and maintenance structure following deployment. It’s partnering two sales agents, Daiwabo Information System and Ryoyo Ryosan, both of Tokyo. It will also provide maintenance support in collaboration with TOMORROW NET of Tokyo, which will be responsible for operation and maintenance.

It says that with these partners, it will build a one-stop structure covering customer proposals, deployment, operation, and maintenance, and will support the development and expansion of AI infrastructure in Japan.

What are AI Servers?

An AI server is a high-performance server that handles AI training and inference processing. As generative AI becomes more widespread and data utilization becomes more sophisticated, Sharp says there’s growing demand in Japan from corporations, local governments, research institutions, and others who wish to use AI on-premise. At the same time, the global supply-demand balance for key components such as GPUs remains constrained, and procuring AI servers can require considerable time and coordination.

Sharp says it will also respond to market needs through collaboration with its parent company, Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) of Taiwan. 

Overview of the Sharp AI Servers

AI Server for Enterprise Workloads (NVIDIA RTX Pro Server)

This is a modular GPU server that can be configured with up to eight high-performance NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs. It supports AI deployment in business environments, simulation, and visual computing workloads, allowing customers to select the GPU, memory and storage configuration according to their specific applications. It’s designed for inference, AI application development, and the integration of AI into enterprise systems.

AI Server for Large-Scale Training and Inference (NVIDIA HGX System)

This server is equipped with the NVIDIA HGX Rubin NVL8, a server board that interconnects eight GPUs via NVIDIA NVLink, and adopts a Direct Liquid Cooling method. It also supports NVIDIA ConnectX-9 SuperNIC adapters and NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPU configurations, making it optimal for the training and inference of generative AI models, including Large Language Models (LLMs). Sharp says it provides stable high-density, high-power operation, and is well suited for AI training infrastructure and core data center applications.

Both models support cluster deployment based on the NVIDIA Enterprise Reference Architecture (Enterprise RA), and by combining NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet, they provide for the implementation of scalable AI factories.

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