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2.8 External I/O subsystem
This section describes the external I/O subsystem, the 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer, which is
supported on the p5-550 and p5-550Q servers.
2.8.1 I/O drawers
As described in Chapter 1, "General description" on page 1, the p5-550 and p5-550Q
systems have five internal PCI-X slots, which is enough for average configurations. If more
PCI-X slots are needed to dedicate more adapters to a partition or to increase the bandwidth
of network adapters, up to eight 7311 model D20 I/O drawers can be added to the p5-550 or
p5-550Q system.
The p5-550 or p5-550Q system contains up to two GX+ to RIO-2 Adapter cards (FC 1806 -
dual port I/O hub, RIO-2/HSL-2) to connect to the I/O Drawers PCI-X slots through the PCI-X
to PCI-X bridges. Each Remote I/O card supports up to four external I/O drawers. Two
processor cards must be present to support two Remote I/O cards.
2.8.2 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer
The 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer must have the RIO-2 loop adapter (FC 6417) to be
connected to the p5-550 or p5-550Q system. The PCI-X host bridge inside the I/O drawer
provides two primary 64-bit PCI-X buses running at 133 MHz. Therefore, a maximum
bandwidth of 1 GBps is provided by each of the buses. To avoid overloading an I/O drawer,
you should follow the recommendation in the IBM System p5 Hardware Information Center at:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/eserver/v1r3s/index.jsp
Figure 2-9 shows a conceptual diagram of the 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer subsystem.
Figure 2-9 Conceptual diagram of the 7311-D20 I/O drawer
PCI-X Host
B ridge
133 M Hz,
133 M Hz, 64-bit PCI-X
64-bit PCI-X
PC I-X Bridge
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Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
RIO
PC I-X Bridge
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