Gigabyte GA-7TESM Motherboard Supports 288GB of DDR3 Memory

Gigabyte is way better known for its consumer motherboards than for its server solutions, so seeking a little publicity for these boards it teemed up with Netlist in order to certificate the GA-7TESM for using up to 288GB of DDR3 memory at 1333MT/s speeds.

The GA-7TESM is a dual-socket motherboard for Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 series processors, which includes no less than 18 DIMM sockets for installing DDR3 memory modules.

All of these had to be populated with 16GB Netlist memory from the company's HyperCloud series in order to achieve the 288GB total capacity.

Netlist's HyperCloud is a special type of memory that was first announced at the end of 2009.

Such modules use a technique called rank multiplication to allow for up to 16GB of memory to be installed on a single stick.

Rank multiplication allows for the four individual physical ranks of chips to the hidden from the memory controller hub, making it believe regular 2 vRanks memory is used.

In 24 socket servers, this memory could allow OEMs and other system designers to include up to 384GB of DDR3, making such modules ideal for virtualization and other applications that require vast amounts of memory.

Netlist has designed the modules to operate at 1333MT/s (which could be roughly translated into 1333MHz) and this is also the speed the Gigabyte server motherboard is certified to runt them at.

Outside of the dual Intel Xeon processors and the 18 memory banks, the Gigabyte GA-7TESM motherboard also includes 8 ports SAS 6Gbps ports, 6 SATA 3Gbps ports via the Intel ICH10R south bridge, PMI 2.0 and iKVM remote management, and four Gigabit LAN ports (Intel 82576EB plus dual Intel 82574L).

The GA-7TESM motherboard retails for $483.95 (about 353 Euro) and can be configured with a wide series of optional add-on cards to deliver advanced RAID functionality.

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