World’s Most Powerful ARM Desktop: Marvell ThunderXStation ThunderX2 Workstation

Posted by – November 5, 2018

Gigabyte announces the industry’s first ARMv8 workstation based on Cavium’s ThunderX2 ARM64 multi-core processor. This 4U workstation is called the ThunderXStation. GIGABYTE has designed and is manufacturing the ThunderXStation. The 4U tower is 27″ (D) x 17″ (H) x 7″ (W) and designed for floor mounting. The power supply included is a 800W PSU with a 1+1 redundant option. The motherboard is a standard GIGABYTE motherboard form factor.

The motherboard includes:
Dual or single ThunderX2 processor support. Optionally with LGA 4077 socket.
Integrated chipset.
8x DIMMs per CPU.
DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz DIMMs.
1x Management LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps.
Integrated VGA, 1920×1200.
ASPEED AST2500 BMC.
2x PCIe Gen 3.0 slots per CPU. (1x x16/x8/x4/x1 AND 1x x8).
1x Type-1 OCP PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 slot per CPU.
2x NVMe PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 ports with on board SAS slim line connectors per CPU.
2x SATAIII on board connectors.
2x U.2 or SATAIII 2.5″ drive bay, supports any combination of NVMe and SATAIII SSDs.
1x RS-232 port.
4x USB 3.0 ports.
2x 8-pin GPU power connectors.

Each CPU can support upto 8 DDR4 DIMMs. The front 2.5″ drive bay supports upto 2 drives. An optional 3.5″ storage bay holds 4 drives. Initially, 2.2GHz 32-core 4-threads per core. Other SKUs will be available depending on demand. Various nVidia video cards have been tested with the open source Nouveau driver. Initial shipments include the nVidia GeForce 710 with dual monitor support. The AMDGPU driver has been tested with various AMD GPUs. Additional AMD and nVidia GPUs are being tested. Initial shipments include a 1 GbE PCIe adapter. If standard PCIe slots are in short supply a QLogic dual port 1/10 GBaseT RJ45 OCP adapter and driver are available. Units ship with Ubuntu 17.10. CentOS 7.4 and OpenSUSE are also available. Pricing is competitive with high end single and dual socket workstations from leading name brand workstation vendors with comparable Gold/Platinum processors. For the most upto date pricing and sales information on ThunderXStation please contact: http://www.phoenicselectronics.com