IWILL announced this week its new 2P workstation platform for AMD Opteron processors. This is the first dual-CPU workstation mainboard for AMD K8 architecture from this well-known manufacturer of server and workstation components.

IWILL’s DK8X is based on AMD 8000 (8111+8131+8151) and is perfectly suitable for DCC (Digital Content Creation), CAD/CAM, scientific research and other workstation applications that require a lot of computing power. Certainly, the mainboard features such necessary and up-to-date capabilities as Serial ATA-150, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, USB 2.0 and so on.

Here comes the full list of specs:

• Supports two Socket 940 AMD Opteron processors with dual-channel memory support;
• AMD 8151, 8131 and 8111 I/O tunnels;
• 8 DIMM slots for up to 16GB of registered PC1600, PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory;
• 1 AGP Pro 8x (110W) slot;
• 2 PCI (32-bit/33MHz) slots, 1 PCI-X (64-bit/100MHz) slots, 2 PCI-X (64-bit/133MHz) slots;
• 2-channel ATA-133/100/66/33 integrated controller;
• 4 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support (Sil3114 controller from Silicon Image);
• 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet from 3Com;
• USB 2.0 ports;
• 2 FireWire ports;
• 2 PS/2 ports, 1 Parallel and 1 Serial ports;
• eATX form factor with EPS 12V power connector.

Pricing and availability information was not released by IWILL at this time. From my own point of view, the product will be available within the next few weeks since IWILL’s competitors, such as TYAN, already supply 2-way Opteron mainboards for workstations. Certainly, IWILL DK8X will not be an inexpensive mainboard.