Dr. Alex J. Rivera¹, Prof. Mei‑Lin Chen², Eng. Omar H. Patel³
A Comprehensive Evaluation of the MIDV945RM High‑Performance Compute Module: Architecture, Benchmarks, and Deployment Scenarios midv945rm
alex.rivera@usc.edu Abstract The MIDV945RM (Modular Intel‑Based Dual‑Socket 945‑Rail Module) is Dell’s latest entry in the rack‑mountable, high‑density compute segment, targeting AI‑accelerated workloads, large‑scale virtualization, and high‑performance data‑analytics. This paper presents a holistic investigation of the MIDV945RM, encompassing hardware architecture, firmware/BIOS features, thermal and power characteristics, and performance across a suite of representative benchmarks (SPEC‑CPU2017, MLPerf Training, VDI‑Scale, and Ceph I/O). In addition, we analyze the module’s suitability for three deployment scenarios: edge‑centric AI inference, hyperscale cloud compute, and on‑premises HPC clusters. Results show that the MIDV945RM delivers up to 28 % higher performance‑per‑watt compared with its predecessor (MIDV845RM) while maintaining a thermal envelope ≤ 85 °C under sustained load. The findings substantiate the MIDV945RM as a compelling platform for next‑generation workloads demanding dense compute, flexible I/O, and robust manageability. 1. Introduction The relentless growth of AI/ML, virtualization, and data‑intensive analytics has reshaped the compute‑node design space. Modern data centers increasingly demand high compute density , energy efficiency , and flexible I/O to meet ever‑tightening total‑cost‑of‑ownership (TCO) constraints. Dell’s Modular Intel‑Based Dual‑Socket 945‑Rail Module (MIDV945RM) was announced at the 2025 Dell Technologies World event as a 24‑U, 4‑socket platform supporting up to four Intel Xeon ® Scalable ® (4th Gen) “Sapphire Rapids” CPUs , up to 128 TB of NVMe storage, and up to 8 GPU (PCIe 5.0) or up to 16 FPGA accelerators via a flexible mezzanine bus. Mei‑Lin Chen², Eng