4405ch02 Architecture and technical overview.fm
Draft Document for Review May 28, 2009 1:59 pm
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IBM Power 570 Technical Overview and Introduction
FC 5637 supports:
Only 10 Gbps SR connectivity
62.5 micron multi-mode fiber cable type
– LC physical connector type
– 33 meters maximum range
2.7.3 IVE subsystem
Figure 2-14 shows a high level-logical diagram of the IVE.
Figure 2-14 IVE system placement
Every POWER6 processor-based server I/O subsystem contains the P5IOC2 chip. It is a
dedicated controller that acts as the primary bridge for all PCI buses and all internal I/O
devices. IVE major hardware components reside inside the P5IOC2 chip.
The IVE design provides a great improvement of latency for short packets. Messaging
applications such as distributed databases require low latency communication for
synchronization and short transactions. The methods used to achieve low latency include:
GX+ bus attachment
Immediate data in descriptors (reduce memory access)
Direct user space per-connection queueing (OS bypass)
Designed for up to 3-times throughput improvement over current 10 Gbps solutions
Provide additional acceleration functions in order to reduce host code path length. These
include header / data split to help with zero-copy stacks
Provide I/O virtualization support so that all partitions of the system can natively take
advantage of the above features
Allows one 10 Gbps port to replace up to 10 dedicated PCI 1 Gbps adapters in a
partitioned system
One of the key design goals of the IVE is the capability to integrate up to two 10 Gbps
Ethernet ports or four 1 Gbps Ethernet ports into the P5IOC2 chip, with the effect of a low
cost Ethernet solution for low-end and mid-range server platforms. Any 10 Gbps, 1 Gbps,
100 Mbps or 10 Mbps speeds share the same I/O pins and do not require additional hardware
3
Category 5 cable, commonly known as Cat 5, is a twisted pair cable type designed for high signal integrity.
Category 5 has been superseded by the Category 5e specification.
POWER6 chip
System
memory
GX
in
terfac
e
IVE
2 x 10 Gbps or
4 x 1 Gbps Ethernet
P5IOC2
