Intel will be over the moon that another key hardware maker has adopted its Atom chips at the heart of its embedded servers.
Although the spec of the Atom makes sense, the take up of Atom based servers has been disappointing. Now Super Micro has been showing off its latest embedded server solutions at Embedded World 2014 in Nurnberg, Germany with Intel Atoms at the heart of them all.
A1 series motherboards
Supermicro's new A1 series motherboards feature 4-8 cores, 14-20W SoC, 64GB ECC memory, and quad GbE LAN ports. The A1SAM/SAi motherboards are optimised for low-power server/storage, web-hosting applications, while the A1SRM/SRi motherboards with integrated bulk Crypto (10Gb/s) Intel QuickAssist technology are targeted for network security appliances.
A1 Series Intel Atom based embedded serverboards use Intel "Silvermont" microarchitecture and feature 2.4GHz 64-bit, 22nm 3D Tri-gate System on Chip process. Tri-gate is designed to offer higher performance per watt and greater power efficiency.
Pitched at SMBs
Super Micro is pitching the cards at SMBs who want low-power server/storage, web hosting, networks security appliance (Rangeley with QuickAssist).
The A1 Series run at running at 20W and includes the A1SAi-2750F (Mini-ITX) which is a Low-Power 8-Core SOC and the A1SRi-2758F (Mini-ITX) which is an embedded Communications 8-Core card.
There is the A1SAM-2750F (microATX) which featuers Turbo Boost Technology enabled 8-Core and the A1SRM-2758F (microATX) which is an Embedded Communications 8-Core card.
Embedded server systems
On the Embedded Server side there is the SYS-5017K-N6 which is a communication server featuring Intel Pentium B915C processor which runs on a 15W, 1.5GHz 3M, Gladden chip.
There is the SYS-5018A-MHN4–1U which features a 4x 3.5-inch hot-swap and 2x 2.5-inch internal HDD/SSD bays. This is a short-depth, rack mount, Networking and Security Server which runs 8-Core Intel 20W Atoms.
Then there is the SYS-5018A-MLTN4–1U compact, which has two 3.5-inch or four 2.5-inch internal HDD/SSDs, 14W 4-Core Intel Atom C2550, up to 64GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC or non ECC UDIMM, quad 1GbE LAN ports.
The SYS-5018A-FTN4–1U ultra-compact has front I/O quad 1GbE LAN ports, two 3.5-inch or four 2.5-inch internal HDD/SSDs. It runs 20W 8-Core Intel Atom chips.
All up, this is a major victory for Intel, which is trying to get a wider adopt of its Atom chips over ARM in the server arena.
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