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X8DAH+/X8DAH+-F User's Manual
1-3 Chipset
Overview
Built upon the functionality and the capability of the 5500 Series Processor plat-
form, the X8DAH+/X8DAH+-F motherboard provides the performance and feature
set required for dual-processor/dual-IOH-based high-end systems optimized for
High Performance Computing (HPC)/Cluster platforms. The 5520 chipset consists
of the 5520-IOH (North Bridge), and the ICH10R (South Bridge). With the Intel
QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) controller built in, the 5520 platform is the fi rst dual-
processing platform that offers the next generation point-to-point system intercon-
nect interface that replaces the current Front Side Bus Technology, substantially
enhancing system performance and scalability.
The 5520 North Bridge connects to each processor through an independent QPI
link. Each link consists of 20 pairs of unidirectional differential lanes for transmis-
sion and receiving in addition to a differential forwarded clock. A full-width QPI
link pair provides 84 signals.
The 5520 supports up to 36 PCI Express Gen2 lanes, peer-to-peer read and write
transactions. The ICH10R provides up to seven PCI-Express ports, six SATA ports
and 10 USB connections.
In addition, the 5520 platform also offers a wide range of RAS (Reliability, Avail-
ability and Serviceability) features. These features include memory interface ECC,
x4/x8 Single Device Data Correction (SDDC), Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC),
parity protection, out-of-band register access via SMBus, memory mirroring,
memory sparing, and Hot-plug support on the PCI-Express Interface.
Main Features of the 5500 Processor and the 5520 Chipset
Four processor cores in each processor with 8MB shared cache among cores
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Two full-width Intel QPI links, up to 6.4 GT/s of data transfer rate in each direc-
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tion
Virtualization Technology, Integrated Management Engine supported
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Point-to-point cache coherent interconnect, Fast/narrow unidirectional links, and
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Concurrent bi-directional traffi c
Error detection via CRC and Error correction via Link level retry
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