✧✦Catherine✦✧Mar 28

so i took apart an NVIDIA BF-3 card and would anybody who understands it please enlighten me why it has on board:

  • Puya P24CM02 (256 KB)
  • Winbond W25Q256JVBM (32 MB)
  • Winbond W25Q512JVBQ (64 MB)
  • MXIC MX66L2G45G (256 MB)
  • a Kingston EMMC128-TY29 (128 GB)
  • a Microchip CEC1736 root-of-trust controller (which embeds 2 or 4 MB of internal SPI flash and is connected to the other three SPI flashes... I think)
  • and an ASPEED chip with a p/n I did not extract from under thermal compound looking suspiciously similar to those awful BMC devices, connected to 1 GB of Samsung DDR4

I wasn't prepared for a 1 Tbit eMMC connected directly to the main ASIC. what could it possibly be storing there? the field engineer's porn stash?

Show threadbenjojoMar 28

@whitequark I mean you have basically bought a nice computer _with_ a nice on-board nic, rather than a NIC.

The BF's are mostly nice for "cloud" workloads where you need to make imaginary NICs/VirtIO storage on the thing it's attached to, though you can have the card itself by the root bridge with the right semi cursed adapters

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Mar 28
@benjojo what does it need to start booting?.. does the damn thing has a power switch?
Show threadbenjojoMar 28
@whitequark is yours not enumerating? I don't know how you acquired it but it might have a different OS on the card that is trying to do something interesting
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Mar 28
@benjojo oh no I tried to give it 12V from a power supply for funsies. (it just sits there consuming no power)
Show threadbenjojoMar 28
@whitequark did you put the power in the 12v connector on the side or on the gold finger? You almost definitely need to supply both so the BMC can start the show etc
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧
@benjojo side, don't have a good way to supply the gold finger rn but looking into it
Mar 28 at 6:39pmWeb
Show threadequinoxMar 28
@whitequark @benjojo possible you also need +3V3SB (and worst case +3V3 though that seems unlikely)