AMD targeted financial services firms with its new motherboard designs, said Vlad Rozanovich, AMD vice president of commercial business for the Americas. Financial services companies usually deploy servers for transaction processing or internal clouds, and AMD's motherboard designs are easy to customize.

Every motherboard can't be "one size-fits all," especially for the financial services industry, Rozanovich said.

"One thing we wanted to do is remove things that are not necessary," Rozanovich said.

Wall Street companies also typically want in-house server management, and one of AMD's modifications involved stripping management components from the motherboard, Rozanovich said. Some motherboards include components to remotely manage servers, and simplified boards gives financial services better control and management over servers.

The baseline hardware implemented by the financial services community is already very similar, and the open-source motherboard spec could make servers easier and less expensive to manage and deploy over time.