Canada [FS] 1x Microsoft FGPA Accelerator Card (EDIT: Sold - Motherboards)

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jrotenberg

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Nov 23, 2021
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Edit March 3: Motherboard's and memory have been sold. Just left looking to sell off the FGPA! Come on people! It's shiny!

Edit Feb 28: gotta get rid of these... looking for $200 CAD a mobo, and $500 CAD for the FGPA, but toss any offers out there my way!

Edit Feb 16: Life got busy, but I'm still looking to clear these. One 'REV E' motherboard has been sold. I'll continue to slash prices to see if I can garner some interest and get these off my hands... say $250 CAD/motherboard and $750 CAD for the FGPA (and $50 CAD for the stick of RAM tossed into anything)? Feel free to reach out with offers or haggles in any case.

Edit Jan 22: Price cuts. Boards to CAD $400, FGPA to $900, and just simplifying with buyer covers shipping. Looking to clear, and open to offers.

Howdy all! I have some (safe to say) fairly niche items that I'm looking to get off my hands. I picked them up from an auction... opaquely being sold as "Microsoft Motherboard" and "Microsoft Card", and upon picking them up, I was a bit surprised to find myself with what are evidently some dev motherboards and an FGPA that got diverted en-route to their final destination (likely Azure datacenter YT022 in Toronto, based on the shipping labels) and ended up in UPS overgoods purgatory instead. I've gone through multiple back-and-forths with MSFT at a various levels, offering them first-dibs to buy them back if they so desired ( being their diverted, proprietary goods, after all. Seemed the right and fair approach to go about first), but they've shown no interest in such a buy-back - summarizing MSRC's stance on it after asking around appears to be "good luck with the sale!" So, sell I shall!

FS:
  • 2x new (most likely DEV or TEST) Microsoft Azure Project Olympus Motherboards which. The boards I have do not appear to be production boards—their P/N stickers have "REV E" (x1) and "REV F" (x2) notations... and I got them with stickers on the some of the boxes flat out saying "Microsoft Motherboard - Work in Progress" (that admittedly gave the game away). They do; however, appear to be spec'd-up appropriately for PROD use: they generally follow the specifications laid out in the Open Compute Project Olympus Intel XSP Motherboard—Motherboard for dual-socket Intel Xeon Scalable Processor(XSP) collateral documentation. They are 1U, dual-socketed LGA-3647 boards; however, one can clearly note MSFT's dev work at hand on these boardsbvious MSFT branded mezz TPM's, other PCB branding, noted set-outs for Project Cerberus components, etc.
    • I won't do an exhaustive listing of the likely specs of the boards: See the OCP collateral sheet linked above for the jist of it—anything further I may add may very well be incorrect speculation on my part, so I'm just going to leave it at that + pics. If anyone wants more detailed pictures of specific areas or the like, ask away, and I'll do my best to provide whatever further details or pics I can.

  • Likewise (viz. of similar providence) I have 1x Microsoft Azure Project FGPA Accelerator card (Project Catapult v3, Longs Peak edition)—also likely a DEV or TEST unit (labeled with a "REV C" sticker). Evidently this would usually pair with an Olympus motherboard in the datacenter for accelerating purposes.
    • The specs for the Project Catapult Longs Peak FGPA are a bit better known, even without testing (see here, together with pics):
      • Arria 10 GX 1150 FGPA (P/N: 10AXF40GAE [non-standard]/10AX115N2F40E2LG [likely corresponding public component])
      • 5 GB DDR4 SDRAM (Nanya NT5AD256M1604-HR)
      • Mellanox ConnectX-4Lx NIC ASIC (capable of up to 50 GbE connectivity)
      • 1x QSFP+ port
      • 1x USB Type B external port
      • 3x PCIe x8 interfaces: 2x available via PCIe edge, and 1x available via OCuLink
      • also comes with one 4-pin header wire (see pics)

  • I also have a single stick of 16GB Samsung M393A2K40DB2-CVF DDR4-2933/PC4-23400 Single Rank x4 RDIMM. It was also acquired via auction, and packaged up nice and snugly in box with Microsoft Services labeling—however this time with FedEx shipping labels. I believe this a suitable memory module for Cascade Lake-SP (Scalable) Xeon's (see here), which may have it suit the bill as an appropriate memory module for one of these boards.

N.B. here is that all of the above are untested. They are far above what I can punch at (dual socketed Cascade Lake Xeon's and a 50Gbe FGPA accelerator card? I'm a hobbyiest—and a broke one at that!—not a cloud-provider), so I am re-selling them exactly as I received them: that means I unfortunately can not provide any guarantee or warranty of any kind for these guys: while they appear to be completely undamaged, new, and what one would expect of a PROD unit upon visual inspection, I can provide no guarantee of their actual functionality. I do want to make this sure this is absolutely clear: I'm selling these with absolutely no guarantee towards any of the units functionalities, an providing absolutely no warranties or returns. WYSIWAG here. Of course, as I mentioned, If you want some more pics or whatever other info I can potentially provide, feel free to ask away.


I've admittedly have had a hard time gauging the market for interest and prices for these: they are somewhat bespoke. My first posting and pricing on Reddit r/homelabsales saw serious interest and reach-outs... including from Scott Hanselman of MSFT, who expressed that his biz unit would want them back. I put it all on hold while I waited to hear back as he querried his VP's and higher-ups. Considering all the interest I had received in that pause, my second post did raise prices (I am broke, and have no qualms attempting to adjust to meet market demand). I spent the last week attempting to make the sale to one gent who expressed interest in buying the whole lot, along with offering me a GPU on top of everything (I had sold my RX 5700 back in October for gas and medication money, and have been laptop-bound since. Not kidding about the financial straits here, so it was an offer I was very open to entertaining). Unfortunately things haven't panned out with him, despite his interest, so I'm casting my nets out again. Slight changes of pricing again between my reddit r/homelabsales posts and here: my second post with adjusted prices didn't garner as much interest as the first, so I'll adjust with however the wind seems to be blowing in order to sell these. My pricing is open to OBO at this point, so if you feel I'm overcharging, shoot me an offer!

Pricing in CAD, buyer covers related shipping expenses (Canada Post Xrespesspost tracked, insured, with signature is the preferred default method, but chat for rates/quotes).
  • For the motherboards I'm asking $200 CAD. I'll be shipping them in and with all the original packaging that they shipped to Microsoft with (ie. all the original shipping details/manifests still plastered on the boxes (see pics); however I may have to cover up the shipping stickers to comply with Canada Post's requirements for insurable parcels (in which case I'll tape some paper over it or something) but otherwise they're shipping out as I received them myself.
    • N.B. that one motherboard did not ship with any electrostatic bag: just very firmly packed in it's styrofoam and double boxed. I have no problems wrapping that one up in aluminum foil prior to shipping it out, although I wouldn't imagine it to be the biggest concern (was seemingly good enough for MSFT's purposes. and the OCP material available do make them out to be fairly hardy.

  • Asking for $500 CAD for the FGPA.
  • Asking $50 CAD for the Samsung RDIMM module as an add-on to any other sale: I'll tuck it into one of the other boxes and it'll ship together. The economics of shipping a single stick of memory in the 11"x9"x4" box I have it in are otherwise a bit skewed, but I'll sell it solo within Canada/CONUS for $100 CAD if there's interest.

Shipping is out of Toronto, and of course local sale is of course a welcome option considering the size of these motherboards. Payment via EMT (interac e-transfer) or local cash is prefered, but open to Paypal, or (non-esoteric) cryptocurrencies if that floats whomevers boat.

Cheers!




 
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Samir

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Very interesting stuff. I would caution you on international sales though as there are technology export sanctions and laws that you may violate depending on the country of import.
 
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jrotenberg

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Nov 23, 2021
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Another bump and price cut to see if I can get these moving. One Rev E motherboard has been sold (two remaining Rev F's). Prices to $250 CAD/board and $750 CAD for the FPGA. Enticing, yes? ;)
 

jrotenberg

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Nov 23, 2021
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Bump again: gotta get rid of these.. toss offers my way if you're at all interested. I'm willing to go to $200 CAD for each of the remaining motherboards, and $500 CAD for the FGPA.
 
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