Mellanox Grid Director 4700 Installation Manual
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The following figure is a simplified functional block diagram of the Grid Director 4700
components.
Figure 4: 4700 Block Diagram
The main building blocks of the Grid Director 4700 chassis are listed and described in the
following sections.
Grid Director Midplane
The Grid Director includes a passive Midplane that connects the InfiniBand differential
signals, control signals and power between the different boards in the chassis. (Fabric Board
signals are routed from the front of the chassis to the Midplane; Line Boards are routed from
the rear of the chassis to the Midplane.) The Midplane is not field serviceable.
Line Boards
The rear side of the Grid Director 4700 can host up to up to eighteen 18-Port QDR (40Gbps)
Line Boards (sLB-4018). Each line board has 18 external QSFP interfaces, and 18 internal
4X InfiniBand interfaces for connectivity between the Line cards and the Switch fabric. Line
boards are installed at the rear of the chassis in a horizontal position.
Fabric Boards
The Grid Director 4700 supports up to nine Fabric Boards (sFB) that are installed at the front
of the chassis.
324-port chassis: The sFB-4700 QDR Fabric Board is installed in a standard 324-port chassis,
in a vertical position. Each sFB-4700 has 36 internal QSFP InfiniBand ports.
648-port chassis: The HyperScale Fabric Board is installed in a 648-port chassis in a vertical
position. Each HyperScale Fabric Board has 36 internal QSFP InfiniBand ports and 12
external 12x InfiniBand ports with CXP connectors.
The Fabric Boards determine the total bandwidth of the switching Clos topology within the
chassis.
Grid Director Power Backplane
The power supply unit (sPSU-S) and horizontal fan unit (sFU-40H) modules are connected to
the system through the backplane, which provides the mechanical, control and electrical
interface to the controllable AC/DC 48V power supplies. It allows electric current flow,