Pci Express Generation 2; Intel I/O Controller Hub 9 (Ich9); Section 8. Bios; Overview / Description - Dell PowerEdge M710 Technical Manualbook

Dell™ PowerEdge™ M710 Technical Guidebook
Intel I/O Controller Hub (ICH). The DMI is equivalent to a x4 PCIe Gen1 link with a transfer rate of 1 Gb/s
in each direction.

PCI Express Generation 2

PCI Express is a serial point-to-point interconnect for I/O devices. PCIe Gen2 doubles the signaling bit
rate of each lane from 2.5 Gb/s to 5 Gb/s. Each of the PCIe Gen2 ports are backwards-compatible with
Gen1 transfer rates.
In the Tylersburg-36D IOH, there are two x2 PCIe Gen2 ports (1Gb/s) and eight x4 PCIe Gen2 ports (2
Gb/s). The x2 ports can be combined as a x4 link; however, this x4 link cannot be combined with any of
the other x4 ports. Two neighboring x4 ports can be combined as a x8 link, and both resulting x8 links
can combine to form a x16 link.

Intel I/O Controller Hub 9 (ICH9)

ICH9 is a highly integrated I/O controller, supporting the following functions:
• S ix x1 PCIe Gen1 ports, with the capability of combining ports 1-4 as a x4 link
• T hese ports are unused on the PowerEdge M710
• P CI Bus 32-bit Interface Rev 2.3 running at 33MHz
• U p to six Serial ATA (SATA) ports with transfer rates up to 300 MB/s
• T he PowerEdge M710 features two SATA port for optional internal optical drive or
tape backup
• S ix UHCI and two EHCI (High-Speed 2.0) USB host controllers, with up to twelve USB ports
• T he PowerEdge M710 has eight external USB ports and two internal ports dedicated for
UIPS. Refer to the Whoville Hardware/BIOS Specification for the USB assignments for
each platform
• P ower management interface (ACPI 3.0b compliant)
• P latform Environmental Control Interface (PECI)
• I ntel Dynamic Power Mode Manager
• I /O interrupt controller
• S MBus 2.0 controller
• L ow Pin Count (LPC) interface to Super I/O, Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and SuperVU
• S erial Peripheral Interface (SPI) support for up to two devices
• T he PowerEdge M710's BIOS is connected to the ICH using SPI

sectiOn 8. biOs

a. Overview / Description
The PowerEdge M710 BIOS is based on the Dell BIOS core, and supports the following features:
• N ehalem-EP 2S Support
• S imultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) support
• C PU Turbo Mode support
• P CI 2.3 compliant
• P lug n' Play 1.0a compliant
• M P (Multiprocessor) 1.4 compliant
• B oot from hard drive, external optical drive, iSCSI drive, USB key, and SD card
• A CPI support
• D irect Media Interface (DMI) support
• P XE and WOL support for on-board NICs
• M emory mirroring and spare bank support
• S ETUP access through <F2> key at end of POST
• U SB 2.0 (USB boot code is 1.1 compliant)
• F 1/F2 error logging in CMOS
• V irtual KVM, CD, and floppy support
21