Raptor Launches Arctic Tern As An Open-Source BMC Solution

Open-source device manufacturer Raptor Computing Systems earlier this month teased their new FPGA-based open-source soft BMC product while today that "Arctic Tern" product has been formally announced.

Arctic Tern is a soft BMC solution intended to replace proprietary baseboard management controllers on servers. Arctic Tern is an FPGA system that runs the Kestrel soft BMC and can be plugged into existing servers to replace the BMC functionality relied on commonly by ASpeed ASICs with proprietary software.

Arctic Tern makes use of a Lattice ECP5 FPGA and is fully open-source, including the HDL firmware, and related tooling. Raptor Computing hopes that OpenPOWER users like those running their Talos II and Blackbird POWER9 hardware will be especially fond of this new product.

Raptor Computing Arctic Tern Module

The Arctic Tern Module "AT1MB1" is a ModBMC-compatible FPGA card that offers integrated Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI output, and uses the Lattice ECP5 FPGA and has 1GB of DDR3 memory. Arctic Tern runs a completely self-contained OS and fully open-source either as a firmware solution or an RTOS like Zephyr.

Raptor Computing Arctic Tern with Carrier Card

Raptor also has the Arctic Tern BMC Kit "AT1PC2" that includes the Arctic Tern module plus a PCIe carrier card, FSI adapter, JTAG adapter, and cabling to connect to the Talos II. The PCIe card features two mini HDMI ports and one Gigabit Ethernet port.

This open-source soft BMC module costs $900 USD for just the module or the BMC kit will cost $1600 USD if interested in this fully open-source soft BMC solution.

More details on the Arctic Tern via RaptorCS.com.