Interfaces
Rev 2.3
Mellanox Technologies
14
2
Interfaces
Each adapter card includes the following interfaces:
•
“Ethernet Interface”
•
“PCI Express Interface”
•
“I2C-compatible Interface”
•
“LED Interface”
Figure 1: MCX314A-BCBT Card
The adapter cards include special circuits to protect from ESD shocks to the card/server when
plugging copper cables.
2.1
Ethernet Interface
The network ports of the ConnectX®-3 adapter cards are compliant with the IEEE 802.3 Ether-
net standards listed in
Table 4, “Features,” on page 12
. Ethernet traffic is transmitted through the
cards' QSFP+ connectors.
2.2
PCI Express Interface
The ConnectX®-3 adapter cards support PCI Express 3.0 (1.1 and 2.0 compatible) through an x8
edge connector. The device can be either a master initiating the PCI Express bus operations or a
slave responding to PCI bus operations. The following lists the PCIe interface features:
•
PCIe Base 3.0 compliant, 1.1 and 2.0 compatible
•
2.5, 5.0, or 8.0GT/s link rate x8
