Avoton MB with 64GB Ram?
- Thread starter Andyreas
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Andyreas - I saw the support on ARK but have yet to see a product supporting 64GB RAM.
The chip can do it, but it looks like boards are limited to 32GB for the time being. I believe the chip needs unregistered ram which I can only find in 8GB sticks. I don't think that will change until the UP Intel systems get a bump in maximum memory and there is a need for 16GB UDIMMs.
Edit: It would be interesting to see something like the Supermicro board with 8x SO-DIMM
Edit: It would be interesting to see something like the Supermicro board with 8x SO-DIMM
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ECC support - yes. Registered ECC no. ECC UDIMM are also used on other Xeon lines when large memory scale out is not required.
This is why you won't see 64GB Avoton boards until 16GB UDIMMS show up. By using UDIMM the line levels pretty much limit you to 4 DIMM socket designs.
problem is servers use RDIMM so the mass effect of purchasing will never hit UDIMM. RDIMM protects both the address and data line. UDIMM doesn't protect against bit-flip on address line (the data you get back will be valid! but the wrong data!)
Kind of like how SATA has 1-bit IOECC and no IOEDC and SAS has 2-bit ECC and 1 bit(or more) IOEDC/PI - the only time you will need it, is when it screws you..
Kind of like how SATA has 1-bit IOECC and no IOEDC and SAS has 2-bit ECC and 1 bit(or more) IOEDC/PI - the only time you will need it, is when it screws you..
Eh? I'm not sure that is exactly right. There is no "protection" on the address lines of an RDIMM, If an address line bit gets flipped it gets flipped - and you don't know about it whether you are using RDIMM or UDIMM.
The only difference between RDIMM and UDIMM is the presence of a register on the DIMM between the bus exposed by the DIMM connector and the chips on the module. In RDIMM your CPU reads/writes this register rather than reading/writing the memory chips directly. By doing this you can have lower net line levels on the address lines from the memory controller, stricter enforcement of voltage levels, and more predictable settle-times, etc, which ultimately allow you to have more DIMMs in the design - so larger memory systems using more DIMMs are almost always RDIMM, which is why most all server systems use RDIMM.
UDIMM has a cost advantage due to not needing the extra register and a latency advantage too (generally lower CAS for the same clock rate due to avoiding loading/unloading the register).
The Avoton C2000 series only supports unbuffered DDR3 DIMMs (called UDIMMs). Some boards take the long version of 240 Pin UDIMMs, others take 204 Pin SO-DIMMs.
Such modules can only take maximum 16 (or 18 with ECC) chips and no more than two ranks. Also, the DRAM chips on them have to be either 8 or 16 Bit wide.
All this is not the case for RDIMMs or LRDIMMs. Those can have many more components, may have up to four ranks and the chips may be 4 Bit wide. This is not supported on the Avoton.
To make 16GB DDR3 "unbuffered" DIMMs or SO-DIMMs, it needs 8 Gigabit DDR3 chips, which no manufacture had as of yet.
But: The very first company making such chips and also 16GB modules is Intelligent Memory, Link: http://www.intelligentmemory.com/. There has just been a report about their new modules in the German computer magazine c't. Intel has released a new BIOS for the C2000 series for these Intelligent Memory 16GB DDR3 modules. They also exist in ECC SO-DIMM form-factor for use on the Supermicro Avoton board A1SAi-2750F or others.
Per my information, the modules also work well on any AMD processor based boards which take DDR3 DIMMs or SO-DIMMs, just on most Intel platforms the BIOS can not yet identify unbuffered modules larger than 8GB. I hope Intel will release BIOS updates for their Xeon-series soon, so I can upgrade my iMac and my Dell laptop with 16GB modules!
Such modules can only take maximum 16 (or 18 with ECC) chips and no more than two ranks. Also, the DRAM chips on them have to be either 8 or 16 Bit wide.
All this is not the case for RDIMMs or LRDIMMs. Those can have many more components, may have up to four ranks and the chips may be 4 Bit wide. This is not supported on the Avoton.
To make 16GB DDR3 "unbuffered" DIMMs or SO-DIMMs, it needs 8 Gigabit DDR3 chips, which no manufacture had as of yet.
But: The very first company making such chips and also 16GB modules is Intelligent Memory, Link: http://www.intelligentmemory.com/. There has just been a report about their new modules in the German computer magazine c't. Intel has released a new BIOS for the C2000 series for these Intelligent Memory 16GB DDR3 modules. They also exist in ECC SO-DIMM form-factor for use on the Supermicro Avoton board A1SAi-2750F or others.
Per my information, the modules also work well on any AMD processor based boards which take DDR3 DIMMs or SO-DIMMs, just on most Intel platforms the BIOS can not yet identify unbuffered modules larger than 8GB. I hope Intel will release BIOS updates for their Xeon-series soon, so I can upgrade my iMac and my Dell laptop with 16GB modules!
Yeah, just a warning, we ran across this user on the FreeNAS forums. He appears to be related to a memory manufacturer. I scolded him there:
New 16GB DIMMs bring ASRock C2750D4I to 64GB | FreeNAS Community
because I feel that it is deceptive for someone to pretend to be just an average user but actually have some vested interest in the matter. The information is useful but the stealth, not.
Regards,
jgreco, one of the moderators over at forums.freenas.org, etc.
I would like to take banks of 16GB modules of Intelligent Memory, do you know if I have to have a specific version of bios on the c2750?