Spine Card; Block Diagram Of The Gigabit Ethernet Switch Card - HP Cluster Platform Interconnects v2010 Manual

Figure 3-4: Block Diagram of the gigabit ethernet switch card
Sense &
Clocks
Control
Lanai-XM-based Myrinet-GbE conversion for each of these 8 ports
15
XBar16
The XBar16 is a 16-port crossbar switch implemented in a single chip. The fat tree
topology provides systematic ways of connecting these 16-port crossbar switches to
serve large numbers of hosts in a way that achieves full bisection.

3.2 Spine card

A spine card looks the same as an 8-port switch card, except the front-panel
ports are labeled 0–7, corresponding to the ports of the backplane interface. The
indicator LEDs are the same. These cards are used in modular configurations
(more than 128 nodes). They do not have an XBar16.
Myrinet Backplane Interface
7 6 5 4
Serial link
Scan path
XBar16
14 13 12
GbE Front-panel Ports
3 2 1 0
dual + 12V
Power & hot-swap
circuits
11 10
Switch, spine and monitoring line cards
9 8
HPTC-0017
3-3