Iwill begins mass production of small dual Opteron boxes

AFTER MONTHS of delays, Taiwanese manufacturer Iwill will begin mass production of a dual AMD Opteron CPU small form factor PC next week, according to a source at the company. The ZMAXdp will be the world's first dual-CPU small form factor workstation.

The ambitious project, announced earlier this year, has been delayed by the extreme difficulty of fitting a pair of 64-bit CPUs, and their bulky cooling apparatus, into a tiny SFF case. That's not to mention making space for twin hard disks, a DVD or CD drive, a floppy drive and memory card reader, a PCI card, and an AGP 8x graphics card.

There are several differences between the production model and evaluation samples that were demonstrated to a few hardware reviewers, earlier this year - these include additions to the BIOS and improvements in the PC's thermal control. The ZMAXdp relies on two temperature-controlled rear-mounted fans to pull air across the motherboard, through the twin heat-pipe connected CPU radiators and vent it through the 300 watt power supply.

Unhappy with the performance of prototypes, Iwill engineers redesigned the system repeatedly, improving the cooling and power to cope with the highest power Opteron 250 CPUs, and moving the AGP slot to handle the largest graphics cards.

Our source said the ZMAXdp barebones (motherboard, CPU cooling system and case only) would be priced "well over $500", and, in fact, reports from system integrator, Armari, which has a close relationship with Iwill, suggest the price could exceed $700.

Although net profit per unit will be very good, design costs have also been high, and the ZMAXdp looks like something of a loss-leader for Iwill. The company does not expect huge sales of this workstation, with perhaps 2,000 predicted to be sold by Christmas, but does expect it to have a valuable positive effect on the company's brand image.

If fitting two CPUs in such a tiny box seemed hard, it's nothing compared to another product on the drawing board at Iwill: a dual-CPU, dual-PCI Express SLI-compatible small form factor PC. Providing enough power will be a serious difficulty with this concept so if it makes it onto the market - and it won't be soon - don't be surprised to see an external power supply unit. µ

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