Innodisk Launches M.2 Graphics Card with 4K Output
by Anton Shilov on December 5, 2018 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- M.2
- Silicon Motion
- Innodisk
Innodisk has released a graphics adapter in an M.2 form-factor. The card supports resolutions of up to 1920×1080 at 60 Hz or 3840×2160 at 30 Hz and is designed for various ultra-compact and embedded applications that require industrial temperature ranges.
The Innodisk M.2-2280 graphics adapter is based on the Silicon Motion SM768 controller, presumably with 256 MB of embedded memory. For outputs the card offers three headers for HDMI, LVDS, and DVI-D signals. Under the hood the graphics processor has a 128-bit 2D engine, an ARM Cortex-R5 general-purpose core, a video decoder supporting a variety of formats (including H.264 MVC/AVS+, H.263, MPEG-4, MPEG2, M-JPEG, RealVideo, VC-1, & Theora), and a Content Adaptive Technology (CAT) engine for framebuffer compression. The SM768 can use a PCIe 2.0 x1/x2 or USB 3.0 interface, so it can support a variety of applications. Meanwhile, the version of the chip used by Innodisk can handle industrial grade temperatures from -40°C to +85°C.
Innodisk’s M.2 graphics adapter can be used to add a display output to systems that physically cannot accommodate a graphics card and do not have enough connectors for monitors. Keeping in mind that such applications are pretty diverse and can run a variety of OSes, the adapter supports both Microsoft Windows and Linux-based operating systems.
The manufacturer does not disclose MSRP of its M.2 graphics adapter, but companies do not usually reveal pricing of special-purpose hardware in general. The product is not listed yet, so it is unclear whether Innodisk can ship it straight away, or it will take some time before it polishes off its software.
Source: Innodisk (via Hermitage Akihabara)
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CaedenV - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Something like this as a Phys-X adapter would have been really cool before it started being integrated on the GPU and emulated on CPUs so well.The Benjamins - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
This would be good for turning a Ryzen system into a server, with out the need for a big dGPUDragonstongue - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
that is why they currently make Ryzen APU (comes with built in Vega igp) ^.^Hul8 - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Except1) APUs have limited display connectors - this could come handy if you need more - especially digital - connections; and
2) current Ryzen APUs have limited PCIe lanes to begin with, partially defeating the purpose of saving PCIe lanes; Instead of the 16/4/4 PCIe lanes for expansion cards/M.2/chipset on regular Ryzen, you only get 8/4/4 on APUs. (At least this is the case for Ryzens up to 2000 series - for 3000 AMD may have more leeway if they use a multi-chip package, allowing them to offer the full 24 lanes for APUs, too.) This means using this kind of M.2 graphics on a full Ryzen would still leave you with 16 lanes of PCIe available, whereas Ryzen APU comes with 12.
Better yet, putting this on a chipset-connected M.2 (since performance is secondary in this use case) would leave 20 lanes available on Ryzen.
Hul8 - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Also, if you have no need for ECC and could use higher per-core performance, you could probably use this on a mainstream Intel motherboard for additional display outputs without sacrificing any of the 16 CPU PCIe lanes.Hul8 - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Seeing as it seems this uses PCIe 2 x1 or x2 only, it could even do with an M.2 adapter in a chipset x1 slot, as long as it physically fit a x4 connector. Not sure about power delivery in that case, though - a x4 device is allowed to draw more power than x1.cosmotic - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Ah yes, RealVideo support. That will be useful.Why DVI-D if it already has HDMI? Seems totally redundant.
GreenReaper - Thursday, December 6, 2018 - link
Maybe it supports dual-link DVI-D. HDMI only offers single-link, limiting resolution/depth/refresh rate.abufrejoval - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
What a great idea!I'd want to see variants with an AST2500 and an Nvidia GTX 1050ti!
abufrejoval - Thursday, December 6, 2018 - link
ok, scratch the 1050 for power and cooling but the AST2500 would be cool.