Over the past two months I have been publishing a number of fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P “Granite Rapids” flagship processor performance under Linux. All of those new Xeon 6900 series benchmarks on Phoronix have been from the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 2U rack server that has proven to be a very robust and reliable server platform.
After my Xeon 6900 series “AvenueCity” reference server failed, Giga Computing came to the rescue and provided the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 barebones server platform to continue on in providing new Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids benchmarks on Phoronix. This 2U dual processor rack server has been seeing constant benchmarking the past two months now and has been working out exceptionally well and reliable.
The R284-A92-AAL1 also boasts a great deal of expansion capabilities. Beyond supporting two Xeon 6900 series processors with 12 channels of DDR5-RDIMM / MRDIMM memory, this Giga Computing GNR server platform supports twenty-four 2.5-inch Gen5 NVMe / SATA / SAS-4 hot-swap bays, two additional 2.5-inch hot-swap bays on the rear, two M.2 slots for PCIe Gen5 x4, two FHHL dual-slot PCIe Gen5 x16 slots, and two FHHL single slot PCIe Gen5 x16 slots. Plus with an OCP NIC 3.0 PCIe Gen5 x16 slot, there is a wealth of connectivity options on this Giga Computing server whether you are after a general purpose high core count server platform, HPC server, or for harnessing multiple GPUs/accelerators in assembling an AI server paired with Granite Rapids CPUs featuring AVX-512 and AMX.
The Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 relies on air cooling for the two Intel LGA-7529 processors. With this server there are four 80mm intake fans.
The motherboard in use for this rack server is the Gigabyte MA94-FS0.
Rear I/O on this Giga Computing server include dual Gigabit Ethernet, Gigabit Management LAN for the BMC, mini-DP output connected to the ASpeed AST2600 BMC, and two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports. Front panel I/O includes two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports in Type-A form.
For the twenty-four hot-swap 2.5-inch storage bays in the front, eight of them are connected to the first CPU while the remaining sixteen are to the secondary CPU socket — in the event you were considering a single CPU initially to then potentially upgrade with a secondary CPU later.
Shipping with the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 are 1+1 2700W 80 PLUS Titanium redundant power supplies for providing plenty of power if running the top-end Xeon 6980P processors, maxed out with MRDIMMs, and using multiple PCIe accelerator cards.
