IWILL, a popular maker of servers, workstations and components for them, will soon roll-out its barebones for two AMD Opteron microprocessors. The move will prove that it is possible to make dual-chip configurations in cube-like barebone’s cases with space constraints.

“IWILL ZMAXdp is designed with the digital professional in mind, from pre-visualization to audio post-production. With features to boost performance and a stable architecture, the AMD Opteron processor for workstations is key to the end-to-end digital production environment,” the company announced in the press-release, AMDboard.com web-site reported.

Cube-like barebones and personal computers have been gaining popularity for the last year or two thanks to initiative of Shuttle computer, who was the first to bring out its XPCs into the market. Other makers of computer components quickly realized the advantages of idea of compact and quiet PCs and were rapid to follow Shuttle with their small form-factor offerings that resembled the original XPCs. Now that the market of desktops recognizes the SFF pretty well, this is time to offer something small, stylish, quiet, but very powerful for the market of workstations.

IWILL’s ZMAXdp powered by two AMD Opteron 200-series microprocessors will be based on NVIDIA nForce2 250Gb core-logic supporting 800MHz HyperTransport bus, Serial ATA-150 with RAID support, Gigabit Ethernet as well as NVIDIA’s very own Firewall technology. The barebone will offer 1 AGP 8x and 1 PCI slot for additional flexibility as well as 2 bays for 3.5” HDDs in addition to 1 5.25” bay. The SFF system will come with 300W power-supply unit.

IWILL is the first company to make a 2P small form-factor workstation. The firm positions its forthcoming barebone for CAD/CAM, video/graphics designers who are interested in simultaneous 32-/64-bit computing. While the market for such systems is clearly not as large as the market for small PCs, IWILL is likely to enjoy high gross-margins of 2-way systems.

IWILL ZMAX based on nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset will sample in July. Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499.

It is not clear whether there is demand for AGP-based solutions on September 2004, when PCI Express x16 graphics cards are likely to take over the predecessors.