Hp 4X Ddr Infiniband Interconnect, And Infiniband Mezzanine Hcas; Ddr Infiniband Interconnect - HP Cluster Platform Introduction v2010 Installation Manual

1.2.1.2 HP 4X DDR InfiniBand Interconnect, and InfiniBand Mezzanine HCAs

The HP 4X DDR (dual date rate) InfiniBand interconnect for HP BladeSystem c-Class is a
double-wide interconnect module for the c-Class enclosure. It is based on the Mellanox InfiniScale
III 4X DDR InfiniBand switch chip. The 4X DDR InfiniBand interconnect for HP BladeSystem
c-Class provides 24 InfiniBand 4X DDR ports with 20 Gbps port-to-port connectivity. The ports
are arranged as 16 downlinks to connect up to 16 server blades in the enclosure (up to eight in
the Workgroup System Tower), and 8 uplinks to connect to the external InfiniBand switches to
build an InfiniBand fabric, if applicable. All links conform to InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA)
specifications.
Figure 1-4 shows the optional HP 4X DDR InfiniBand module being installed in a c-Class (c7000
shown) enclosure. The process to install the module is the same for the Workgroup System Tower,
except it is installed in interconnect module bays 3 and 4 (IMB3/4) instead. Workgroup System
Tower configurations are shipped with all of the modules installed, and this figure is provided
for reference purposes only.
Figure 1-4 4X DDR InfiniBand Interconnect
The following list describes the callouts shown in
1. 4X DDR InfiniBand interconnect
2. Latch
Note:
When the 4X DDR InfiniBand interconnect module is used in a Workgroup System Tower, it is
installed in interconnect module bays 3 and 4.
InfiniBand HCAs
The HP 4X DDR InfiniBand dual-port mezzanine HCA (host channel adapter) for HP BladeSystem
c-Class is based on ConnectX InfiniBand technology from Mellanox. The InfiniBand dual-port
mezzanine HCA delivers low-latency and high-bandwidth for High-Performance Computing.
The 4X DDR InfiniBand dual-port mezzanine HCA can be plugged into the PCI-Express connectors
on the server blades. To obtain the best performance, HP recommends that the InfiniBand
18 Cluster Platform Workgroup System Tower Overview
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Figure 1-4: