Intel Visual Compute Accelerator Card VCA2 Teardown
Intel launched the second-generation visual compute accelerator card VCA2 a few years, which is a cloud computing device for video editing and image work, providing HD, UHD video cloud services, and complex 3D application support for secure data centers. Users can install a Windows or Linux instance and connect directly to the device remotely. It is a cost-effective way of operating for businesses that allow multiple users to use the same accelerator card.
VCA2 looks very similar to general graphics cards but has a different function. It implements Quick Sync video acceleration through the integrated Iris Pro P580, which has also been discontinued. Recently, Der8auer, a famous overclocking enthusiast from Germany, purchased a VCA2 and disassembled it.
The VCA2 is equipped with three Xeon E-1585L v5 processors with a TDP of 45W. Each processor has a corresponding SO-DIMM memory slot, supports up to 64GB of DDR4-2133, and then shares a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface through the PLX chipset, and then accesses the server to provide computing services. The Xeon E-1585L v5 processor has a base frequency of 3.0 GHz and a turbo frequency of 3.7 GHz. The integrated Iris Pro P580 is GT4e class with 72 EU units and has 128MB of eDRAM cache.
For general users, a visual compute accelerator card at the level of VCA2 is not available. In fact, Der8auer is also trying to use VCA2 on the system, it doesn’t seem to be an easy task, and has not found a complete software solution to run VCA2 properly.
