IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB ITX MotherBoard

ELBRUS MCST History

Before we look at the IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB motherboard lets first look at the history of Elbrus.

Elbrus CPU’s have been around for a very long time although unless you’re from Russia you’ve likely never heard of them.

They were first released in the early 1970’s and used in the Soviet space program, nuclear weapons research and defence systems as well as for research.

Elbrus Timeline

• Elbrus 1 (1973) was the first in the line.
  • A side development was an update of the 1965 BESM-6 as Elbrus-1K2.
• Elbrus 2 (1977) was a 10-processor computer, considered the first Soviet supercomputer, with superscalar RISC processors. Re-implementation of the Elbrus 1 architecture with faster ECL chips.
• Elbrus 3 (1986) was a 16-processor computer developed by the Babayan’s team, and one of the first VLIW computers in the world.
• Elbrus 2000 (2001) was a microprocessor development of the Elbrus 3 architecture. Also known as Elbrus-S.
  • Elbrus-3M1 (2005) is a two-processor computer based on Elbrus 2000 microprocessor working at 300 MHz.
  • Elbrus МВ3S1/C (2009) is a ccNUMA four-processor computer based on Elbrus-S microprocessor working at 500 MHz.
• Elbrus-2S+ (2011) working at 500 MHz, with capacity to calculate 16 GFlops.
• Elbrus-2SM (2014) working at 300 MHz, with capacity to calculate 9.6 GFlops.
• Elbrus-4S (2014) working at 800 MHz, with capacity to calculate 50 GFlops.[1]
• Elbrus-1S+ (2016) SoC with GPU, working at 600–1000 MHz, with capacity to calculate 24 GFlops.
• Elbrus-8S (2014–2015) working at 1300 MHz, with capacity to calculate 250 GFlops.
• Elbrus-8SV (2018) working at 1500 MHz, with capacity to calculate 576 GFlops.
• Elbrus-16S (2019) working at 2000 MHz, with capacity to calculate 1.5 TFlops.

Over the years Elbrus have used several different architectures including: SPARK, x86 and Elbrus 2000.
Back in 2014 ELBRUS released the Elbrus-4C CPU which was designed for home and office use within Russia. Performance wasn’t great and as it couldn’t fully support x86. Computers using the Elbrus-4C CPU shipped with a custom proprietary Linux distro named Elbrus OS. Little is known about the success of this platform and they are never seen in the western world. I tried to buy an Elbrus-4C computer and have it shipped from Russia to the UK back in 2015 and it proved impossible.

Elbrus-4C Based PC

IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB Motherboard

The IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB Motherboard is the brain child of a group of enthusiasts that banded together to crowdfund a security focused Mini ITX motherboard featuring a 1.5GHZ 8 core Elbrus 8CB CPU and ships with either 8GB or 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM. The board does not ship with a heatsink however it is compatible with any heatsink designed for the Intel LGA3647 socket.

IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB Motherboard

Full Technical Specifications

• Form-factor: Mini-ITX
• CPU: MCST (Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies) Elbrus-8CB 8-core @ 1.5 GHz VLIW (fully compatible with any LGA3647 heatsink)
• SB: MCST KPI-2 Multicontroller
• RAM: 8 GB or 32 GB (2x [4+1] 8 Gbit/32 Gbit DDR4 DRAM 2400 MHz ECC)
• SATA: 2x M.2_2280 + 4x SATA_6G
• Storage Expansion: 1x microSD (HC)
• Cache: 1x PATA 8 GB (required as cache device for hardware emulation of x86 on Elbrus)
• PCIe: 1x PCIe2_x16 + 1x PCIe2_x1 (as USB3)
• Security:
  • 1x TPM SPI connector
  • 2x boot firmware chip with extra security
  • 3x heatsink detectors
  • 1x temperature sensor trigger
  • 2x tampering sensor
• Network:
  • Marvell M88E1111-RCJ chipset
  • 1x 1G_SFP
  • 3x 1G_RJ45
• GPS: GPS chip with internal antenna port
• USB:
  • 2x USB 2.0 (rear)
  • 4x USB 2.0 (+PD) (rear)
  • 2x USB 3.0 (rear)
  • 1x USB 2.0 (internal)
• COM: 1x COM header (internal) required for debugging boot
• Debug: 1x 6-pin debug port, 1x 4-pin (USB to GPIO)
• Video: 2x HDMI (1 HDMI per SM768/256 MB)
• Audio: Integrated simple audio codec (Linux-compatible)
• Additional Sensors:
  • Fall detection sensor
  • Gyroscope
  • Water sensor
• Additional Connectors:
  • 2x PWM-4
  • RTC battery connector
  • Simple BEEP connector
• PCB: 14 layers (level 5 accuracy) / ISOLA Hi Tg 180

The Motherboard is also fully opensource and after funding the board schematics and design specifications will be released on github.

Crowdfunding for the IcepeakITX ELBRUS-8CB is expected to go live early next year via crowdsupply. More details can be found here.

Check out more interesting tech coming to crowdfunding sites here.