What the hell is this thing at the bottom?

[Mortler]

What the hell is this thing at the bottom of this Intel ES cpu? 

[emosun]

an edge connector

[NF-A12x25]

45 minutes ago, emosun said:

an edge connector

what’s it for? I’m rly curious actually. Diagnostics??

[Mortler]

is this normal for ES cpus?

[Sarra]

Intel's new RGB controller?

 

Looks like an extra diagnostic or memory controller port. Since it's an ES, then it's probably for an Engineering team to get extra data from the CPU.

[Mortler]

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Intel's new RGB controller?

 

Looks like an extra diagnostic or memory controller port. Since it's an ES, then it's probably for an Engineering team to get extra data from the CPU.

That's kinda what I was thinking as well, but it can't find anything about something like this online. I can't even find out what server motherboard would be compatible let alone one that would leave clearance for the bottom port. I have three of these all are different all the information i have on there is this on table that I have attached.    

[Sarra]

Just now, Mortler said:

That's kinda what I was thinking as well, but it can't find anything about something like this online. I can't even find out what server motherboard would be compatible let alone one that would leave clearance for the bottom port. I have three of these all are different all the information i have on there is this on table that I have attached.    

Snip

So, for ES, they can have a raised socket with extra clearance, so it's not impossible to fit that on a board. Not to mention, there are engineering boards that have special sockets, so nothing is impossible here.

[Motifator]

This is for the C600 chipset stuff, it's one of those chips that made it to the Xeon Gold, Platinum or Silver. Server material, works with LGA 3000 something how many pins I always forget. Later models came out to compete with AMD's offerings and sucked pretty much. The socket this thing uses had a complicated mount even without that thing under it.

[bmx6454]

i think it's called an omni-path connector, for something called "omni-path fabric"

https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-xeon-scalable-processor-family-review

https://www.servethehome.com/intel-skylake-omni-path-fabric-does-not-work-on-every-server-and-motherboard/

[Motifator]

Correct, I recall this when looking up over the feature sets of this platform. Actually, I once planned on making a single or dual socket C600 rig with one of those things off the bay. They were selling engineering samples for like 50-100 dollars a pop, questionably indeed. They were actually shipping the CPUs, but selling ES CPUs is not really legal.

Another cool feature of this platform was, not with the P4800X. That's the SSD I have next to my 900P on this PC, it was actually the Optane persistent memory. They used Optane sticks like DRAM, to boast the whole thing. All in all, the platform had some cool ideas, but the CPUs were bubble compared to what AMD offered later.