Dual socket server board suits core-intensive applications

3rd June 2015

Gigabyte

Barney Scott

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GIGABYTE Technology has announced its first cache-coherent, dual socket ARM server board, the MT70-HD0, and its associated 2U rackmount, the H270-T70. These two models, based on the Cavium ThunderX ARMv8 processor, accelerate GIGABYTE’s recent efforts to bring accomplished ARM-based server products to the market thereby opening doors for scale-out server workloads.

Designed for the 48-core ARMv8 2.5GHz ThunderX processor, the MT70-HD0 is a dual socket motherboard built with the same half-width format used in the existing GIGABYTE 2U, 4 node blade servers and in the company’s Open Rack systems. Each server node combines up to 96 cores with up to 1TB of high speed 2400MHz DDR4 memory, two 40Gb/s LAN ports directly controlled by the SoC processors, and IPMI based remote board management capabilities.

Low SoC TDP combined with high end onboard memory and networking enables a platform with enormous potential for operators of core-intensive applications looking for uncompromised performance and significant power savings simultaneously.

The H270-T70 is a 2U, 4 node rackmount using one MT70-HD0 board per blade, housing 384 ARMv8 cores in total. Built with a redundant power supply system and a fan-based cooling system serving the four nodes, the rackmount is built with a high efficiency thermal and energy design complementing the power saving aspect of the ThunderX processors.

With two different versions providing front and rear access to the nodes, this server is designed with the flexibility to deliver high-performance compute or balanced compute and storage acceleration for the most demanding applications in Big Data, large-scale web and virtualisation domains.

“We have already developed and released ARM based products oriented toward lightweight workloads and storage applications,” said Alex Liu, Technical Marketing Executive, GIGABYTE. “But now with the MT70-HD0 and the H270-T70, we are adding the industry’s first cache-coherent two-socket ARM platform to our portfolio using Cavium ThunderX processors, enabling a solution suitable for datacentre grade workloads. We have already begun initial shipments of these systems.”

“Demand for Cavium ThunderX workload-optimised multi-core ARMv8 processors continues to grow. We delivered ThunderX ARMv8 SoCs with up to 48-cores, integrated accelerators and Ethernet fabric, designed for optimal performance and TCO for workloads including cloud, Big Data and large-scale web, “ said Steve Cumings, Director, Market Development, Data Centre Processor Group, Cavium. “We’re excited to expand our already-successful collaboration with GIGABYTE to address the accelerating demand for ThunderX platforms.”