MBT8301 Technical Reference
Trenton Systems, Inc.
5
PCI Express Interface
A full-height, PCI Express 3.0 x16 mechanical/x8 electrical interface is supported by the Intel
®
Xeon
®
processor in the MBT8301 via the BRC8244 riser card. PCI Express automatic link negotiation and
bifurcation are implemented and previous PCIe link speeds, Gen 1.1 and 2.0, are also supported. PCI
Express’ link scalability allows for cards with fewer electrical lanes to function in the server’s card slot
supported by the MBC8240 modular blade card and BRC8244 riser card combination. The MBC8240’s PCIe
link will automatically negotiate between the processor’s root link and the plug-in target card for the fastest
possible link speed.
A Word about PCI Express 3.0 Interfaces
PCIe 3.0 doubles the PCIe 2.0 per lane interface speed from 500MB/s (5GT/s) to 1GB/s (8 GT/s) via speed
changes and protocol enhancements. As with all previous versions of the PCI Express specification, the PCIe
3.0 interface is backwards compatible and will run Gen3, Gen2 and Gen1.1 I/O cards on the same interface
link. Running a PCIe 3.0 target device such as a Gen3 I/O card at the actual PCIe 3.0 interface speed of
1GB/s
requires
that the PCIe 3.0 link from the root complex (i.e. the processor on the MBC8240) to the
target card be tuned and optimized to meet the speed requirements of PCI Express 3.0. If these tuning
conditions are slightly off or not fully optimized, then the interface will operate at a slower interface
speed. Contact Trenton for more details regarding the specifics of your particular PCIe 3.0 implementation.
Ethernet Interfaces
The MBT8301 has six (6) general-purpose 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet interfaces (Lnk 1-6) available on the
rear I/O plate of the Modular Blade Card. An additional 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet interface (Lnk 0) is
dedicated to Trenton’s IPMI implementation, Trenton Smart System Management (SSM). Trenton SSM
allows for remote maintenance and monitoring of health and stability of your Trenton MBT8301.
SATA/600
There are six (6) Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces available on the MBT8301. Three SATA ports are on the
SHB. Three SATA/600 interfaces are routed to the edge connector of the SHB for use on a SATA-equipped
Modular Blade System Midplane Interface Card, such as the MPI8241. All of the SATA interfaces are
driven with a built-in SATA controller from the Intel
®
C226 Platform Controller Hub (PCH). The board’s
SATA ports can support six independent SATA storage devices such as hard disks and CD/DVD-RW devices
at data transfer rates up to 600MB per second on each port.
The SATA controller has three BIOS selectable modes of operation located under the Advanced/SATA
Configuration menu with a legacy (i.e. IDE) mode using I/O space, an AHCI mode using memory space and
a RAID mode.
Additionally, the SATA implementation supports Hot Plugging/Swapping to reduce MTTR.
Summary of Contents for MBT8301 Series
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