This is a fun one from the team at FMS 2025 this year. The team saw a new Ampere AmpereOne motherboard. The single socket ASRock Rack AMPONED8-2T/BCM might be what folks are looking for in their next Arm platforms.
ASRock Rack AMPONED8-2T BCM AmpereOne Motherboard at FMS 2025
The motherboard itself is a CEB 12″ x 10.5″ platform that fits in many existing chassis. Part of the appeal of a board like this is the ability to put it in a desktop tower platform or a server chassis.
The biggest selling point of this motherboard is the CPU compatibility. This motherboard accepts the 8 channel Ampere AmpereOne processors, and has eight channels of DDR5-5200 RDIMM available.
The other big selling point is that there are six PCIe Gen5 x16 slots that operate in x16. This is a big server processor, so we have plenty of I/O. There are also two MCIO connectors and a M.2 slot for boot.
The rear I/O is interesting since we get four USB Type-A ports and an out of band management port powered by the ASPEED AST2600 BMC. The video output is not VGA, and is instead a mini DisplayPort which is very different for ASRock Rack. The BCM in the name means we have a Broadcom NIC. In this case it is a Broadcom BCM57416 for dual 10Gbase-T networking.
Overall there is a lot here.
Final Words
Hopefully these become available with chips in bundles. Ampere Altra (Max) is certainly aging at this point. While the Altra and Altra Max are still useful processors, folks who want a PCIe Gen5/ DDR5 platform need something newer. That is where AmpereOne comes in. ASrock Rack has been doing the great work of making motherboards that work with Arm chips, and this is one that community is likely to eye for future systems.
