iBase, a Taiwan based networking and embedded motherboard and system manufacturer, seems to be the first company to market with AMD’s Snowy Owl platform. As a reminder, AMD’s Snowy Owl is the embedded version of EPYC, AMD’s datacentre processor range.
Based on the BGA2028 “socket” (BGA is Ball Grid Array, meaning this is a soldered on chip), the iBase MBN806 is powered by an eight-core, eight-thread EPYC Embedded 3201 SoC with a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz. Feeding this octo-core SoC, quad DDR4 memory slots support up to 128GB of registered, or 64GB of unregistered memory, in either ECC or non-ECC flavours. The memory can clock up to 2667 MHz. The proprietary format board includes a single PCIe x8 slot, as well as two SATA III ports and a PCIe x4 M.2 slot that supports both the SATA and PCIe protocols. By default, there are no integrated display outputs, but consumers can purchase a separate IPMI module to add a VGA port to the motherboard. Ethernet connectivity is includedvia an Intel I210-AT GbE controller.
Pricing and availability
Whilst this isn’t really a consumer friendly board, the presence of an EPYC based SoC on the market means that one day we may see an insane embedded M-ITX or M-STX board. Snowy Owl on M-STX? Yes please!
Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum.
