IBM MELLANOX CONNECTX-2 User Manual

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Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for
IBM System x

IBM System x at-a-glance guide

The Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x delivers high-bandwidth and
industry leading low latency 10 GbE connectivity. With industry-leading performance, power-efficiency,
integration and feature set, ConnectX-2 EN with RDMAoE (RDMA over Ethernet) adapters provide an
optimized, low-latency solution for high-transaction databases, financial services, cloud computing, and
virtualized server and storage data center environments. The ConnectX-2 Dual-Port 10 GbE Adapter
improves network performance by increasing available bandwidth to the CPU and providing enhanced
performance especially in virtualized server environments.

The adapter is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x

Did you know?

The Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10GbE Adapter for IBM System x is a a high-performance, dual-port
network adapter for 10Gb/s Ethernet (10GbE) networks with performance requirements for low latency. It
provides an ideal solution for all servers needing high- performance, low-latency data transfer in LAN
connectivity for mission-critical applications. This network adapter provides support for 10GbE networking
with optical or copper connectivity.

Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x 1

Part number information

The part number to order this card is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Ordering part number and feature code

Description Part number Feature code

Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x 81Y9990 A1M4

The adapter has two empty SFP+ cages that support either SFP+ SR transceivers or twin-ax
direct-attached copper (DAC) cables as listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Supported transceivers and direct-attach copper (DAC) cables

Description Part number Feature code

IBM 10Gb SFP+ SR Optical Transceiver (BN-CKM-SP-SR) 44W4408 4942

IBM/BNT 10Gb SFP+ SR Optical Transceiver 46C3447 Not available

IBM/Brocade 10Gb SFP+ SR Optical Transceiver (IB-000180) 45W2411 2117

IBM/Brocade 10Gb SFP+ SR Optical Transceiver 49Y4216 0069

IBM/QLogic 10Gb SFP+ SR Optical Transceiver (SFP10-SR50-IBMX-BK) 49Y4218 0064

IBM Twinax Direct Attach Cable (DAC) - 1m 45W2398 2711

IBM Twinax Direct Attach Cable (DAC) - 3m 45W2408 2731

IBM Twinax Direct Attach Cable (DAC) - 5m 45W3039 2751

Features and benefits

The Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x has the following features:

Performance:

Based on ConnectX-2 EN technology, the PCI Express 2.0 x8 adapter provides a high level of throughput
performance for all network environments by removing I/O bottlenecks in mainstream servers that are
limiting application performance. Servers supporting PCI Express 2.0 with 5 GTps can fully utilize both 10
Gbps ports and achieve up to 40 Gbps duplex bandwidth. Hardware-based stateless offload engines
handle the TCP/UDP/IP segmentation, reassembly, and checksum calculations that would otherwise
burden the host processor. These offload technologies are fully compatible with Microsoft RSS and
NetDMA.

RDMA over Ethernet (RDMAoE) further accelerates application run time. The RDMAoE specification
provides efficient data transfer with very low latencies on lossless Ethernet networks. RDMAoE enables
lowest latency memory transaction, with less than 2µs at full bandwidth with small message size. This
allows very high volume, transaction intensive applications typical of financial market firms and other
industries where speed of data delivery is paramount to take advantage. With Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual
Port 10 Gbe Adapter, high frequency transaction applications are able to access trading information with
shorter times, making sure the trading servers are able to respond first to any new market data and
market inefficiencies, while the higher throughput enables higher volume trading, maximizing liquidity and
profitability.

Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x 2

In data mining or web crawl applications, RDMAoE provides the needed boost in performance to search
faster by solving the network latency bottleneck associated with I/O cards and the corresponding
transport technology in the cloud. Various other applications that benefit from RDMAoE with ConnectX-2
EN include Web 2.0 (Content Delivery Network), Business intelligence, data base transactions and
various Cloud computing applications.

Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN low power consumption, less than 3.5W per port, provides customers high
bandwidth and low latency at the lowest cost of ownership.

I/O virtualization

ConnectX-2 EN with Virtual Intelligent Queuing (Virtual-IQ) technology provides dedicated adapter
resources and guaranteed isolation and protection for virtual machines within the server. The adapter
gives data center managers better server utilization and LAN and SAN unification while reducing cost,
power, and cable complexity.

Quality of Service

Resource allocation per application or per virtual machine is provided by the advanced QoS supported by
ConnectX-2 EN. Service levels for multiple traffic types can be based on IETF DiffServ or IEEE 802.1p/Q,
allowing system administrators to prioritize traffic by application, virtual machine, or protocol.

Specifications

The adapter has the following specifications:



Low-profile adapter form factor



Ports: Two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with SFP+ connectors

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ASIC: Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN



Cabling types: Direct Attached Copper, SR and LR Fiber Optic



Host interface: PCI Express 2.0 x8 (5.0 GT/s)



Features: Stateless Offload, Priority Flow Control, FCoE Ready



Power consumption: 6.4 W (typical)

Ethernet support and standards:



IEEE Std 802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet



IEEE Std 802.3ad Link Aggregation and Failover



IEEE Std 802.3x Pause



IEEE 802.1Q, .1p VLAN tags and priority



IEEE P802.1au D2.0 Congestion Notification



IEEE P802.1az D0.2 Enhanced Transmission Selection



IEEE P802.1bb D1.0 Priority-based Flow Control



Multicast



Jumbo frame support (10KB)



128 MAC/VLAN addresses per port

TCP/UDP/IP stateless offload:



TCP/UDP/IP checksum offload



TCP Large Send Offload (< 64KB) or Giant Send Offload (64KB-16MB) for segmentation



Receive Side Scaling (RSS) up to 32 queues



Line rate packet filtering

Mellanox ConnectX-2 Dual Port 10 GbE Adapter for IBM System x 3