Intel introduced three Atom E3900 series Apollo Lake processors last fall that target IoT, industrial and automotive applications, and Supermicro has designed A2SAV mini-ITX board powered by Atom x5-E3940 SoC that comes with lots of interfaces include 6 SATA ports, two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports, and up to 9 USB interfaces accessible from connectors or headers.
Supermicro A2SAV motherboard specifications:
- SoC – Intel Atom x5-E3940 quad core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.6 / 1.8 GHz with 2MB L2 cache, 12 EU Intel HD graphics (6.5W TDP)
- System Memory – 1x 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM socket for 2, 4, or 8GB 1866/1600/1333MHz Unbuffered non-ECC 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3
- Storage
- 6x SATA3 ports include 2x from SoC, and 4x via Marvel 88SE9230 controller
- 1x SATA DOM (Disk on Module) power connector
- 64Mb SPI Flash EEPROM with AMI UEFI BIOS supporting Plug and Play (PnP), DMI 2.3, ACPI 5.0, USB Keyboard, SMBIOS 2.7.1, and UEFI
- mSATA and M.2 (See expansion below)
- Connectivity – Dual GbE LAN with Intel i210-AT controller
- Video Output – 1x VGA, 1x Display Port, 1x HDMI, 1x eDP (Embedded Display Port)
- USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports (rear), 7x USB 2.0 port (2x rear, 4 via headers, 1x type A)
- Serial – 3x COM ports using RJ45, RS232 and RS485 ports
- Expansion
- 1x PCIe 2.0 (in x8) slot
- 2x M.2 PCIe 2.0, M Key 2242/2280
- 1x Mini-PCIe with mSATA
- Misc – Voltage and temperature monitors, chassis intrusion header and detection, system overheat LED, 2x 4-pin fan headers
- Power Supply – ATX Power connector, 4-pin 12V DC power connector
- Dimensions – 17.145cm x 17.145cm (Mini-ITX form factor)
- Temperature Range – 0°C to 60°C
The company can provide mid and mini-tower chassis for the board, as well as a 1U chassis all “optimized for A2SAV motherboard”. There’s no list of supported operating systems yet, but Windows 10 (IoT), and various Linux distributions will certainly run on the board.
Supermicro product page has a few more details including some documents, but it does not mention pricing information. However, the board is listed for back order on Arrow Electronics for $253.73 (back order), and TigerDirect has the light version of the board, named A2SAV-L, with just two SATA ports and fewer USB ports for $169.99.
Thanks to Paul for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Note the Pericom PCIe bridge/splitter on the board, that’s how they manage to add so many PCIe devices to an SoC that only supports 6 PCIe lanes.
there’s also fewer USB ports on the light version.
What’s the “version”/”protocol” for the HDMI/DP? 1.4 and 1.2 I assume? No info on the website.
@TLS
Thanks for pointing that out (we had already some mixed experiences with PCIe splitter/multiplexers on the Mac Pro years ago). Still scratching my head regarding the use case for the version with the 6 SATA ports (if you connect that much disks consumption of the board itself becomes more or less irrelevant, ECC RAM is missing for doing any serious storage stuff and when adding costs for DRAM, PSU and enclosure it starts to look even more weird)
@kurosu
It’s a SoC with integrated graphics, as you’ll find in the Atom x5-E3940 page linked in this post, so it may answer your question?
@kurosu
Yes, most likely. HDMI 2.0 would require an extra chip, which I can’t find on the picture of the board, but we don’t have a back side picture, so it’s difficult to say for sure.
Note that the Marvell 88SE92xx series is PCIe 2.0 controller that uses 1 or 2 PCIe lanes so it’s limited to 5gbps max. Shouldn’t be a problem if you’re running HDDs but even two mid-range SSDs will max it out.It’s an interesting offer for a home media machine but for server applications the same price you get you a C2558 with 16 PCIe lanes and up to 4 built-in GbE ports.
Could be a great board to make an Xpenology box.
Why did they not added IPMI/KVM feature 🙁
This board won’t be popular like SM’s Xeon-D boards and boards based on C2NNN (C2750) lines due to lack of ECC and max memory is limited. 2 reasons ZFS users are definitely out the picture here! IMO, more of a home board with low power usage.
@Fossxplorer
Since the processor has been designed for “IoT, industrial and automotive” applications, I’d expect it to be used for related projects, although the temperature range will limit potential applications.
What do you do with 6 SATA ports? Obviously some sort of storage application. So why no mention of hardware RAID support?
@Fossxplorer
The C2NNN series don’t have the integrated graphics or the HDMI out. This chip will probably have issues with 4K but can defiantly drive multimedia on a standard 2k TV/monitor. But even with that, it is an oddity. Oh, you can run ZFS on machines with 4-8G just fine as long as you cap the size of the ARC cache. Dedup is out of the question and it’s not going to set any speed records but it works just fine. The lack of ECC is defiantly an issue. I wouldn’t use it outside a SOHO server.
Are the two M.2 connectors stacked? I don’t see the second one. Thank you!
Since I love scrubs (to get an idea when bit rotting might have happened when not using ZFS) I would not even run SOHO servers without ECC DRAM (if you save the ECC RAM with ZFS just ensure you don’t scrub regularly/automagically which makes the whole ‘data integrity’ approach somewhat questionable). Especially when comparing prices of eg HP Microservers (older generations like N54L should also suffice and you get them very cheap) with this board which lacks PSU and disk enclosure.
@sandbender
The C2000 series might suddenly die though: http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/02/08/older-intel-atom-c2000-series-server-chips-may-stop-working-after-a-while-and-theres-no-fix/