HP Wave - m.2 Radeon video card?

[thewizzard1]

Just watched LinusTechTip's mini-review on the Wave - He offer some disassembly teasers, showing the guts a bit... It's a modular video card, for sure... but appears to be plugged into what resembles a M.2 slot:


And to back up this interesting observation, the only motherboard HP offers, Lyon, has but a single slot, which can be the only thing the video card is clearly plugged into, in Linus's video:

http://support.hp.com/my-en/document/c05280322

And the m.2 ports (ID's by their normal screw mounts) on the bottom... So what exactly did they do, here?

Anybody else very curious as to what is going on, here? Did HP make an M.2 Radeon card??

 

[confusis]

It may be just using a M.2 connector in PCIe mode?
HP's spec sheet lists 2x M.2 connector;

• One M.2 socket 1, key A
• One M.2 socket 3, key M

From Kingston;
Socket 1 is designed for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth®, NFC and WI Gig

Socket 2 is designed for WWAN, SSD (caching) and GNSS

Socket 3 is designed for SSDs (both SATA and PCIe, up to x4 performance)

I'm guessing the M.2 Socket 1, Key A is being used for the GPU. It seems that this may artificially limit the card's performance, but it would probably be PCIe Gen 3, so may not as big a deal as we would think.

 

[thewizzard1]

Oh, without a doubt it is, M.2 is adaptable to even a PCIe X4 Gen3 full-size connector. But it seems they actually *made* a graphics card for it!

Also, it'd be Socket 3. AFAIK Socket 1 and 2 are PCIe x2 only, to incorporate SATA and USB connectivity.

 

[Phuncz]

Good catch ! It indeed seems to be a custom-made GPU for M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4. On the lower right side of the board you can read "Tesla-GFX" by the way. There is nothing to keep it from working, as @Aibohphobia has even done this with his STX160.0 build by using an M.2 to PCIe slot adapter. Having an M.2 connector on the GPU itself cuts out the need, but does require a certain layout to support it on the motherboard. So this could have just as well been an MXM slot, but they probably went with M.2 to save on board space.

@ASRock System take notes

 

[Curlyriff]

It does bring into question if we will see SFF GPU's using M.2 slots in future, thinking along lines of the ITX mobo's or smaller where space at premium.

 

[thewizzard1]

I can hardly imagine a graphics board size smaller than MXM-A... Not for a long time

 

[Phuncz]

When I read the topic title before reading the start post, I was already thinking it was somehow fully contained on a 22110 stick. Maybe some day.

 

[|||]

@ASRock System take notes

Eh, I'd say wait until PCI-e 4.0 comes out, so we'd get PCI-e 3.0 x8 equivalence in a x4 interface.

 

[jtd871]

I'm not so sure that the discrete GPU connects with M.2. IIRC, Linus said something about it shipping with a M.2 SSD and SATA spinner (not that he couldn't be mistaken). I see the 2 M.2 slots on the underside of the mobo, but no other obvious (i.e., large) connector for GPU and the SATA looks like it might be on the underside too.

(OTOH, the board shots look to have been taken with a potato, so it's hard to say much for sure).

 

[EdZ]

I'm not so sure that the discrete GPU connects with M.2.

Yes and no. That sure looks like an m.2 connector. It doesn't appear to be using a normal 'M' keying for PCIe x4 though, looks like it is 'C' keyed counting the traces. Likely a variant meant to carry the normal x4 PCIe lanes, plus the video out from the GPU to the motherboard that hosts the physical connectors.
However, PCISiG have defined the 'C' key for m.2 as intended for WWAN, so this isn't standard compliant m.2.

 

[jtd871]

The board shots seem to show 2 "standard" M.2 slots on the underside of the board. This connector is on the top side with the CPU socket, and is not explicitly called out on the I/O interface list. There is something called out as a WLAN LED Header on the list.