GIGABYTE Announces Availability of Cavium ThunderX-based Servers

Gigabyte announced that their extensive Cavium ThunderX-based server portfolio now is available for orders and that shipments to numerous end customers and OEMs have already begun. These aren’t just any servers as they sport up to 384 ThunderX cores in a standard 2U rack chassis with 64 DDR4 DIMMs, and 40Gb Ethernet network. That kind of power allows for an enormous potential of core-intensive application workload with uncompromised performance.

There are quite a few different models to choose from, but not all of them have had their product page go online yet. Some of the new systems are the following:

• Single-socket 1U R120-T30 servers, in 4 x 3.5″ HDD and 12 x 2.5″ HDD configurations
• Dual-socket 1U R150-T60 servers, in 4 x 3.5″ HDD and 10 x 2.5″ HDD configurations
• Dual-socket 2U R270-T60 servers in 12 x 3.5″ HDD and 24 x 2.5″ HDD configurations
• Dual-socket 2U G220-T60 GPU servers, available with two GPUs and 24 x 2.5″ HDD
• Dual-socket 2U 4-nodes H270-T70 and H260-T70 high-density servers

H270-T70 is one of the ones that already had their product page go live and it’s mouth-watering to see what this system has on hardware. The system is made up of four nodes with 2 48-core Cavium ThunderX CN8890 processors each. Those 384 cores then get to play with up to 4TB DDR4 memory (64x 64GB DIMM), 1TB per node. If that wasn’t enough to get your mouth-watering, then I can add that the system features eight 40GbE QSFP+ LAN ports (Cortina CS4343) and four 10/100/1000 management LAN ports combined over the four nodes. It also features four 2.5-inch hot-swappable storage bays per node and you can also add one half-length low-profile slot PCIe x16 and one mezzanine PCIe x8 card in each note. The end result is a beast with a total weight of 38KG.

The ThunderX workload-optimized server processors are designed to enable best-in-class ARMv8 performance per dollar and performance per watt. With all these features working in unison in a processor supported by the server industry’s major operating systems and development environments, the Cavium ThunderX is ready for the most demanding datacenter-grade applications.

“Gigabyte first began working with Cavium and ThunderX late last year, and have developed and shipped a broad range of platforms to customers,” said Chen Lee, Sales Director, Gigabyte USA. “Our entire portfolio of production systems is now available for order and we are shipping production platforms to customers. We are seeing a strong demand for these platforms and we expect the demand to further accelerate in 2016.”