The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is a single socket AMD EPYC 9004/9005 E-ATX server motherboard for those wanting up to 24 RDIMMs, dual 10 Gigabit LAN, and plenty of storage potential via six MCIO connectors and four PCIe Gen5 x16 slots. Beyond offering nice capabilities for this modern AMD EPYC server motherboard at a ~$700 USD price point, it’s uniquely positioned for an open-source firmware future thanks to ongoing work around AMD openSIL and hopefully followed by OpenBMC.
For those looking at deploying an AMD EPYC 1P server and want a very nice well-rounded server platform while also being interested in open-source firmware whether it be for security/audit reasons or just a passionate open-source enthusiast, the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is currently the only retail motherboard positioned to deliver on such a combination. But it’s not due to Gigabyte’s engineering but rather the independent work being done by the 3mdeb consulting firm on porting Coreboot/Dasharo to this motherboard with AMD openSIL in place of the proprietary AGESA. And they’re eyeing OpenBMC support too for replacing the proprietary BMC firmware stack.
Since last year 3mdeb has been working on porting Coreboot and openSIL to this AMD Turin motherboard. The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is readily available from Internet retailers unlike the other openSIL-supported platforms that AMD has been carrying out openSIL bring-up on being just their internal reference designs. 3mdeb has made good progress on this Coreboot (Dasharo) port to the MZ33-AR1 with openSIL and are aiming to upstream it to Coreboot in the first half of this year. As they shared back at FOSDEM, during the second half of the year they are planning to work on SEV-TIO support as well as an OpenBMC port plus OpenSFI involvement.
3mdeb is bringing this open-source firmware to the MZ33-AR1 without the involvement of Gigabyte but is all their own doing. 3mdeb is also the firm who a few years ago brought Coreboot to a retail MSI motherboard for Intel Alder Lake for their Dasharo efforts. In addition to this EPYC Turin motherboard, 3mdeb is also bringing openSIL and Coreboot to an AMD AM5 MSI motherboard as another new and exciting development. With Zen 6 we can look forward to more widespread AMD openSIL usage that’s expected but for those eager to explore open-source firmware solutions now and the maturing AMD openSIL CPU silicon initialization, these efforts from 3mdeb are the only active efforts I am aware of besides AMD’s reference board targets.
The benefit of 3mdeb going for the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is that this motherboard is readily available and at a decent price point of around $700 USD. With the potential of openSIL+Coreboot and OpenBMC on this motherboard and with 3mdeb’s track record, I ended up buying the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 for testing in preparation for that 3mdeb roll-out. With having the extra EPYC CPUs plus the last of the spare DDR5 RDIMMs on hand, it made for an interesting build to kick the tires with AMD openSIL moving forward.
