Functional Architecture
Intel
®
Server Board S5500BC TPS
Intel order number: E42249-003
Revision 1.0
16
Table 4. Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor 5500 Series Feature Set Overview
Feature
Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor 5500 Series
Cache Sizes
Instruction Cache = 32 KB
Data Cache = 32 KB
8 MB shared among cores (up to 4)
Data Transfer Rate
Two full-width Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect links,
up to 6.4 GT/s in each direction.
Multi-Core Support
Up to four cores per processor.
Dual Processor Support
Up to two processors per platform.
Package
1366-land FCLGA
The Intel
®
Server Board S5500BC supports Intel
®
Xeon
®
processor 5500 series with 95 W
Thermal Design Power (TDP) or less and with a maximum data transfer rate of 6.4 GT/s.
3.1.1 Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect (QPI)
Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) is a cache-coherent, link-based interconnect specification
developed by Intel to connect processor, chipset and I/O bridge components. The Intel
®
IOH
5500 chipset is the first dual-processor server/workstation platform to implement Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect links. Figure 6 provides a platform overview of the Intel
®
IOH 5500
chipset with Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect implementation.
The Intel
®
IOH 5500 chipset supports up to two processor sockets, with up to four cores per
socket. With Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect, caching agents are responsible for participating in
the cache coherence protocol, and home agents are responsible for managing access to the
memory regions they control. Since the Intel
®
Xeon
®
processor 5500 series contains an
integrated memory controller, the home agents and caching agents reside within the processor
sockets. The Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect link blocks include the Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect
Physical through Protocol layers, which are implemented in hardware. No special software or
drivers are required, other than firmware to initialize the Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect links and
load routing information.
Each the Intel
®
Xeon
®
processor 5500 series is connected to the other processor and the Intel
®
I/O Hub (IOH) chipset through dedicated Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect links. Each Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect link is a serial point-to-point connection, with 20 lanes per link under full
width operation. These links are the only mode of data exchange between the processors and
Intel
®
IOH chipset. There are no sideband signals. The Intel
®
QuickPath Interconnect
communication fabric is glueless and does not require special hardware to interface to the
processors to maintain cache coherency.
