Applied Micro XC-1 Server Development Board (Mustang) is Now Available to Developers for $895

64-bit ARM server boards such as Applied Micro XC-1 Mustang and AMD Opteron A1100 development kit have been available since the beginning of the year, but only to selected companies, and at a price of several thousand dollars per board. Applied Micro is now offering their X-Gene based XC-1 development board to individual developers for $895, or about ~40% discount to the $1495 company now have to pay for the board. It may also be available from distributors (part number: EV-883208-X1-PRB-1).

X-C1 Mustang Development Board
XC-1 Development Board

XC-1 board (codenamed Mustang) technical specifications:

  • SoC – Applied Micro X-GeneAPM883208-X1 8-core ARM 64-bit @ 1.6 GHz
  • System Memory – 2x DDR3 UDIMM memory slots up fitted with 2x 4GB sticks (8 GB), upgradable to 16GB
  • Storage – 1x 128Mbit SPI NOR Flash for booting, 1x SATA 3 ports, SD card slot, 1024Kb and 256Kb I2C EEPROM
  • Connectivity – 2x Gigagit port (SGMII), 10 GbE SFP+ cage, 1x Gigabit management Ethernet port (RGMII).  Note: the product brief only mentions 1x Gigabit Ethernet port,  1x Management port, but the Getting Started Guide and the picture above clearly shows all 4 Ethernet ports.
  • USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x mini USB port (for JTAG)
  • Expansion – 1x PCIe x8 connector, expansion connector(s) for GPIOs
  • Debugging – JTAG (mini USB to JUAG) and trace connectors
  • Monitoring – DB9 Serial port
  • Misc – RTC, temperature monitor, BMC connector (I’m not sure what it is, and its purpose)
  • Power Supply – mini-ATX
  • Dimensions – 170 x 170 mm (mini-ITX form factor)

The kit includes X-Gene X-C1 board, a mini ITX Power Supply, a serial/USB FDTI cable, and documentation. I understand you can connect a SATA multiplier to get up to four 6TB hard drives connected to the board.

Mustang Block Diagram
Mustang Block Diagram (USB ports should be USB 3.0)

You’ll also be able to access Linux code (source and binary),  U-Boot firmware (source and binary), Linux development tools, sample application code, and schematics and layout files for X-C1 board. UEFI Tianocore bootloader, as well as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, RedHat, Fedora, OpenSUSE are also available. Download links are apparently provided in the documentation that comes with the board, or you may be able to access these after registration at https://myapm.apm.com/.

This server board is not only capable of running Linux server distributions, and you can insert a PCIe graphics card (e.g. Nvidia GeForce 7600) in to the board, and Android 4.4 Kitkat developed by Linaro, as shown on a video by Charbax, which also includes an overview of the board, and an unboxing of the kit.

Via ARMDevices.net

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13 Comments
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Morgan Ross Egging
Morgan Ross Egging
9 years ago

Am I missing something or is that price a bit high still?

Ian Tester
9 years ago

It doesn’t inspire confidence when the Applied Micro website refers to “ARM-V8” cores instead of “ARMv8” and the diagram shows “12C” instead of “I2C” (or even “I²C”). Someone please educate their sales people.

Ray Knight
Ray Knight
9 years ago

Does the pricing include the 8GB of DDR3 RAM?

miniNodes
9 years ago

Still a bit too steep for us to begin considering these for testing, but, it is much cheaper than the Opteron Kit which goes for $2,999 USD.

Albert ARIBAUD
Albert ARIBAUD
9 years ago

Yes, well, maybe I’d buy one, especially as it’s Mini-ITX and I’ve got a case waiting for it… but apparently, I can’t qualify. Never mind that I’m a U-Boot project member; my fault is to not reside in the USA — they’ll only allow US residents to register and get the developer rebate. :/

Albert ARIBAUD
Albert ARIBAUD
9 years ago


Actually on the X-C1 products page, just below the limited time offer, APM direcst non-US visitors to AVNET’s site for a quote. I happen to live near enough an AVNET local branch office, so I’l try and ask them if the dev offer is applicable through them.

JEN
JEN
9 years ago

> Misc – RTC, temperature monitor, BMC connector (I’m not sure what it is, and its purpose)

It’s probably a “Baseboard Management Connector”. It provides hands-off server management functions: power control, IPMI (reboot), BIOS access, console access, and so on.

Albert ARIBAUD
Albert ARIBAUD
9 years ago


Just for the record, I decided to go through myus.com, because even with the account setup fees, the re-shipping costs and the customs and taxes, I still ended up paying much less than I would have the French distributor — we’re talking 40%-ish less.

Now, on to tinkering…

Khadas VIM4 SBC