ASRock X570D4U BMC Working Toward OpenBMC Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ASRock X570D4U BMC Working Toward OpenBMC Support

For those that happen to own an ASRock Rack X570D4U micro-ATX motherboard or are in the market for a server-grade AMD Ryzen 5000 series motherboard, patches are pending as this motherboard works on OpenBMC support as an alternative to the proprietary BMC software stack that ships with this AMD Ryzen 5000 series + ECC DDR4 supported motherboard...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/ASRock-X570D4U-OpenBMC-Prep

[coder]

How specific are the patches to this specific motherboard? I have an older, Haswel-era ASRock Rack board with a previous generation AST BMC on it. Just curious whether support for such boards & BMC chips might be included or forthcoming.

BTW, I really wish these BMCs had a proper iGPU block, rather than doing software rendering on their ARMv7-A core. If you have to sit at the console of one of these machines and use it locally, it's quite a painful experience and limits you to just 1920x1200 or so.

[coder]

Also, the X570D4U-2L2T variant includes onboard 2x 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

https://www.provantage.com/asrock-x570d4u-2l2t~7ASRI0C2.htm

The PCIe layout of these boards is so boneheaded that someone wanting to run a dGPU would have to run it at x8 lanes to add a 10 Gigabit ethernet NIC. So, if you think you might want > 1 Gigabit and plan to use a dGPU, then you should think really hard about just getting the 2L2T version.

[stormcrow]

Also, the X570D4U-2L2T variant includes onboard 2x 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

https://www.provantage.com/asrock-x570d4u-2l2t~7ASRI0C2.htm

The PCIe layout of these boards is so boneheaded that someone wanting to run a dGPU would have to run it at x8 lanes to add a 10 Gigabit ethernet NIC. So, if you think you might want > 1 Gigabit and plan to use a dGPU, then you should think really hard about just getting the 2L2T version.

Pretty normal normal layout for low end boards. Just because it has a management chip and can at least be marginally classified a "server board" doesn't mean it's a high end system.

[drhoho]

Are there any boards that support Zen 4 Ryzen (AVX-512), BMC, and ECC? I'd like to build a robust floating-point box for processing data. ECC is necessary for reliability.

[Michael]

Are there any boards that support Zen 4 Ryzen (AVX-512), BMC, and ECC? I'd like to build a robust floating-point box for processing data. ECC is necessary for reliability.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen-7000-servers

[coder]

Pretty normal normal layout for low end boards. Just because it has a management chip and can at least be marginally classified a "server board" doesn't mean it's a high end system.

The issue with the PCIe slots is that the one which runs at x16 is the top slot (i.e. closest to the CPU), and blocks the middle one. If you put a graphics card in the bottom slot, it can only run at x8. If you put it in the top slot, the only other one left open is the bottom slot, which populating will steal x8 lanes from the top slot and bump it down to x8. That's what I mean by boneheaded.

I get that it's a mini-ITX board and only has room for 3 slots -- ASRock just picked a dumb layout for them. I get why they put the x16 slot closest to the CPU, but it probably has PCIe retimers anyway and they certainly could've taken the trouble to route all 16 lanes down to the bottom slot, if they'd wanted.

[coder]

Are there any boards that support Zen 4 Ryzen (AVX-512), BMC, and ECC? I'd like to build a robust floating-point box for processing data. ECC is necessary for reliability.

In addition to the ASRock Rack board Michael mentioned, Supermicro makes one with BMC (same AST2600, in fact) and ECC-support:

https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...oard/h13sae-mf

BMC isn't needed for robustness. It's mostly for remote management. Ryzen 7000 CPUs now include an iGPU as standard, so you don't need either BMC or a dGPU just for casual desktop usage.

You can find other AM5 boards that support ECC memory, though there have been some doubts raised about the level of ECC support in some previous-generation motherboards. I haven't read up on the situation with AM5. Anyway, here's another example, but I'm sure there are more:

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-co...m-v7/techspec/

[drhoho]

Thanks Michael and Coder for the Zen 4-ECC motherboard links and info.

[Shagga, Son of Dolf]

I'm running a X10SRM-TF and I too am hoping for OpenBMC to support this board. Supermicro unfortunately already canceled the support