At FMS 2024, the team saw the ASRock Rack GNRD8-2L2T. This is a standard-size motherboard that is designed with the Socket E2 / LGA4710 for the next generation of Intel Xeon 6 processors, codenamed “Granite Rapids.” With lots of expandability, we thought it warranted a quick piece.
ASRock Rack GNRD8-2L2T Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids Motherboard Shown
The ASRock Rack GNRD8-2L2T is a CEB 12″ x 10.5″ size motherboard, so it is a bit bigger than a standard ATX form factor, but it will fit in many server and workstation cases if they have the correct stand-off spots available.
The CPU socket is an Intel Xeon 6 LGA4710, aka “Socket E2”. This is the same socket cover for both LGA4677 that we saw for our recent Intel Xeon 6 6700E Sierra Forest piece. You can see it is for both LGA4677 and LGA4710 as stamped on the cover.
Memory is going to be a big deal. While we still get DDR5 RIMM support, we expect this to go up to DDR5-6400 speeds, which is a huge jump. Based on the DIMM slots, this is an 8-channel DDR5 design.
There are many PCIe x16 slots available on the motherboard. While all are x16 and CXL 2.0, there is a caveat. You must use the R1S CPUs for the full 136 PCIe Gen5 lane single socket designs. So if you have the right CPUs, all seven of these can be PCIe Gen5 x16, and there are 24 lanes left over for the rest of the board. Intel also will support CXL 2.0 on all of these lanes.
We see two M.2 slots and a MCIO x8 connector to use up another sixteen lanes total, but the MCIO x8 can be used for more than just storage or PCIe expansion since this is CXL 2.0 capable as well.
The board also has an ASPEED AST2600 BMC onboard, dual 10Gbase-T via an Intel X710 NIC, and dual 1GbE via dual Intel i210-at’s. What you may not notice on this board is also important. Intel is (finally) ditching the PCH.
Final Words
Granite Rapids is going to be huge for Intel. Instead of being locked into lower I/O and memory, Intel is going to have a huge range of server processors. This is an example of an Intel Xeon 6 R1S 136-lane PCIe Gen5 / CXL 2.0 design. Intel is also massively increasing core counts and memory speeds in this generation. Intel said Granite Rapids-AP launches in Q3 2024, and we are about halfway through Q3 2024, so expect more information as we can share it.
What is an R1S CPU?
The R1S refers to the design, not to the CPU. I assume it means Rack(?) 1 Socket.
What’s with the grey PCIE slot?
The trace patterns on this board are nutty… So many squiggly lines lol!