DeviceTree patches worked on recently allow for the mainline Linux kernel to run on the ASUS “Kommando” IPMI Expansion Card. This is interesting for opening up new possibilities for this external IPMI/BMC expansion card but too bad that less than three years after launching it’s difficult to find.
Back in late 2023 ASUS launched the ASUS IPMI Expansion Card for “turning your high-end gaming PC into a cost-effective workstation for business” they proclaimed in their press release. The ASUS IPMI Expansion Card allows for adding remote management capabilities to any system with this half-height PCI Express 3.0 x1 based expansion card built around the ASpeed AST2600 SoC.
The ASUS IPMI Expansion Card (90MC0AH0-MVUBY0) appears to have not enjoyed too much commercial success as just over two years later it’s difficult to find at Internet retailers nor has there been any successor(s). Amazon and the like have the ASUS IPMI Expansion Card out-of-stock while at smaller vendors it appears available in the $160~190 price range.
In any event open-source developer Anirudh Srinivasan posted DT patches last week for allowing the mainline kernel to then boot on this AST2600 external BMC solution. A v2 patch series was posted yesterday with a few corrections.
“Adds support for Asus Kommando IPMI Card, which is a PCIe card with an AST2600 on it that provides BMC functionality to any host without an onboard BMC as long as it has a PCIe slot. The model name Kommando is based off the model description in the vendor fw.
Currently supported functionality includes UART, booting from SPI, KVM functionality(usb gadget for host, reading VGA framebuffer from host) and LED/Power Control via GPIOs. NIC support is not included, requiring additional patches which will be sent later on. The entire BMC functionality has been tested on an OpenBMC build available here (which uses a modified u-boot device tree).
The card supports some additional functionality in it’s vendor firmware like fan headers with fan speed control, host bios flashing via SPI, PSU monitoring via an SMBUS connector, a custom ASUS SMBUS connector to talk to select ASUS motherboards that support it and exposing a IPMI device via PCIe to the host. These are unsupported at the moment.”
Given the lack of availability and any updates from ASUS around the IPMI Expansion Card, its software stack is presumably going stale but at least this patch series for DT support with the mainline kernel could allow for some new and interesting open-source life to it.
