- Senao built a full Intel Xeon server that lives inside your PCIe slot
- 38 Xeon cores and 64GB RAM on a single network card
- Dual NVMe SSDs, 64GB RAM, and 200Gbps — all on one card
Senao SmartNIC SX906 was one of the more quietly remarkable exhibits on display at Computex 2026 — a PCIe card which functions less like a network adapter and more like a fully equipped server that somehow forgot it was supposed to fit inside a slot.
Built around Intel's Xeon 6 SoC processor in the Granite Rapids-D architecture, the card delivers up to 200Gbps of network performance from a dual-slot form factor.
It weighs 1kg, measures 266 x 98.4 x 40.6mm, and draws power through a PCIe edge finger and a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector — the same connector that feeds power-hungry graphics cards.
More server than network card
This device comes with three processor configurations, including the Xeon 6523P-B, 6553P-B, and the flagship 6563P-B.
The Xeon 6523P-B brings 24 cores running at 2.5GHz with a 295W power envelope, the 6553P-B steps up to 36 cores at 2.6GHz, consuming 355W, and the 6563P-B pushes to 38 cores at 2.4GHz — also at 355W.
All three SKUs support up to 64GB of 4-channel DDR5-4600 ECC memory, carry two M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slots, and include up to 128GB of eMMC storage for good measure.
The 36 and 38 core variants go further still, adding a media transcode accelerator that makes them considerably more capable than the entry-level configuration.
Network connectivity runs through dual 100G QSFP28 ports, though the 24-core SKU is capped at 100GbE total throughput while the two larger variants unlock the full 200GbE.
An ASPEED AST2600 BMC oversees out-of-band management through OpenBMC, with an AST1060 controller handling Intel Platform Firmware Resilience — security infrastructure that belongs in a data centre rack, not a PCIe slot.
A card that refuses to stay in its lane
The I/O configuration is where the SX906 stops making conventional sense entirely.
Alongside the expected networking interfaces, the SX906 carries a MiniDP display output, an RJ45 1GbE management port, and a USB3.0 Type-C port.
That Type-C port is functional enough to charge a smartphone on a workbench while the card simultaneously processes network security workloads at 200Gbps.
A second Type-C console port and two PCIe Gen5 x8 MCIO connectors expose 24 PCIe Gen5 lanes for further expansion, giving engineers considerable room to extend the card beyond its base capabilities.
The SX906 runs Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 natively and supports TPM2.0 Secure Boot, completing a security profile that most standalone servers would be proud to claim.
Whether it carves out a clear commercial niche beyond AI edge deployments and specialised network security remains an open question.
What is harder to argue with, however, is that Senao has packed an entire server's worth of infrastructure into something that slots into a PCIe bay.
Via ServeTheHome
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