Abstract
The IBM Flex System™ IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter delivers low-latency and high-bandwidth for applications in enterprise data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and embedded environments. This adapter is designed to operate at InfiniBand QDR speeds (40 Gbps or 10 Gbps per lane). Clustered databases, parallelized applications, transactional services, and high-performance embedded I/O applications potentially achieve significant performance improvements, which helps reduce the completion time and lowers the cost per operation. The IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter simplifies network deployment by consolidating clustering, communications, and management I/O. The adapter is based on Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN technology, which improves network performance by increasing available bandwidth to the CPU, especially in virtualized server environments.
Changes in the last update:
* Corrected the e-config (AAS) feature code
* Updated the supported servers table
Contents
The IBM Flex System™ IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter delivers low-latency and high-bandwidth for applications in enterprise data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and embedded environments. This adapter is designed to operate at InfiniBand QDR speeds (40 Gbps or 10 Gbps per lane). Clustered databases, parallelized applications, transactional services, and high-performance embedded I/O applications potentially achieve significant performance improvements, which helps reduce the completion time and lowers the cost per operation.
The adapter is based on Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN technology, which improves network performance by increasing available bandwidth to the CPU, especially in virtualized server environments.
Figure 1 shows the IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter.
Figure 1. IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter
Did you know?
This adapter is designed for low latency, high bandwidth, and computing efficiency for server and storage clustering applications. Combined with the IB6131 InfiniBand Switch, your organization can achieve efficient computing by off-loading from the CPU protocol processing and data movement overhead, such as RDMA and Send/Receive semantics, allowing more processor power for the application.
Part number information
Table 1 shows the part number to order this card.
Table 1. Part number and feature code for ordering
| Description | Part number | Feature code (x-config) | Feature code (e-config) |
| IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter | None* | None* | 1761 |
Features
The IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter with its ConnectX-2 controller has the features discussed in the following sections.
InfiniBand
ConnectX-2 delivers low latency, high bandwidth, and computing efficiency for server and storage clustering applications. Efficient computing is achieved by offloading from the CPU routine activities, which makes more processor power available for the application. Network protocol processing and data movement impacts, such as InfiniBand RDMA and Send/Receive semantics, are completed in the adapter without CPU intervention. Graphical processing unit (GPU) communication acceleration provides additional efficiencies by eliminating unnecessary internal data copies, which significantly reduces application run time. The ConnectX-2 acceleration technology enables higher cluster efficiency and scalability of up to tens of thousands of nodes.
RDMA over converged Ethernet
ConnectX-2 utilizes the InfiniBand Trade Association's RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) technology to deliver similar low-latency and high-performance over Ethernet networks. Leveraging Data Center Bridging capabilities, RoCE provides efficient low-latency RDMA services over Layer 2 Ethernet. The RoCE software stack maintains existing and future compatibility with bandwidth and latency-sensitive applications. With link-level interoperability in the existing Ethernet infrastructure, network administrators can use existing data center fabric management solutions.
TCP/UDP/IP acceleration
Applications utilizing TCP/UDP/IP transport can achieve industry leading throughput over InfiniBand or 10 GbE adapters. The hardware-based stateless offload engines in ConnectX-2 reduce the CPU impact of IP packet transport, allowing more processor cycles to work on the application.
I/O virtualization
ConnectX-2 with Virtual Intelligent Queuing (Virtual-IQ) technology provides dedicated adapter resources and guaranteed isolation and protection for virtual machines within the server. I/O virtualization with ConnectX-2 gives data center managers better server utilization and LAN and SAN unification while reducing cost, power, and cable complexity.
Storage accelerated
A consolidated compute and storage network achieves significant cost-performance advantages over multi-fabric networks. Standard block and file access protocols can use InfiniBand RDMA for high-performance storage access. T11-compliant encapsulation (FCoIB or FCoE) with full hardware offload simplifies the storage network while keeping existing Fibre Channel targets.
Specifications
The IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter has the following features and specifications:
- Based on Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN technology
- Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI)
- InfiniBand Architecture Specification v1.2.1 compliant
- Supported InfiniBand speeds (auto-negotiated):
- 1X/2X/4X SDR (2.5Gbps per lane)
- DDR (5Gb/s per lane)
- QDR (10Gb/s per lane)
- IEEE Std. 802.3 compliant
- PCI Express 2.0 x8 host interface up to 5GT/s bandwidth
- CPU off-load of transport operations
- CORE-Direct application off-load
- GPUDirect application off-load
- RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)
- End-to-end QoS and congestion control
- Hardware-based I/O virtualization
- TCP/UDP/IP stateless off-load
- Ethernet encapsulation (EoIB)
- RoHS-6 compliant
- Mellanox OFED software package support for SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux
- Power consumption: Typical: 15.6 W, maximum 17.9 W
Supported servers
The following table lists the IBM Flex System compute nodes that support the IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter.
Table 2. Supported servers
| Description | Feature code | x220 | x240 | x440 | p24L | p260 | p460 |
| IBM Flex System IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter | 1761 | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
I/O adapter cards are installed in the slot in supported servers, such as the p260, as highlighted in the following figure.
Figure 2. Location of the I/O adapter slots in the IBM Flex System p260 Compute Node (The IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter is installed in slot 2.)
Supported I/O modules
The IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter supports the I/O module listed in the following table. One or two compatible switches must be installed in the corresponding I/O bays in the chassis. Installing two switches means that both ports of the adapter are enabled.
Table 3. I/O modules supported with the IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter
| Description | Power Systems feature code |
| IBM Flex System IB6131 InfiniBand Switch | 3699 |
The following table shows the connections between adapters installed in the compute nodes to the switch bays in the chassis.
Table 4. Adapter to I/O bay correspondence
| I/O adapter slot in the server | Port on the adapter | Corresponding I/O module bay in the chassis |
| Slot 1* | Port 1 | Module bay 1 |
| Port 2 | Module bay 2 | |
| Slot 2 | Port 1 | Module bay 3 |
| Port 2 | Module bay 4 |
The connections between the adapters installed in the compute nodes to the switch bays in the chassis are shown diagrammatically in the following figure.
Figure 3. Logical layout of the interconnects between I/O adapters and I/O modules
Supported operating systems
The IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter supports the following operating systems:
- AIX V7.1 with the 7100-01 Technology Level with Service Pack 3 with APAR IV14284
- AIX V7.1 with the 7100-01 Technology Level with Service Pack 4, or later (planned availability: June 29, 2012)
- AIX V7.1 with the 7100-00 Technology Level with Service Pack 6, or later (planned availability: June 29, 2012)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 for POWER
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, for POWER
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, for POWER
Regulatory compliance
The adapter conforms to the following standards:
- United States FCC 47 CFR Part 15, Subpart B, ANSI C63.4 (2003), Class A
- United States UL 60950-1, Second Edition
- IEC/EN 60950-1, Second Edition
- FCC - Verified to comply with Part 15 of the FCC Rules, Class A
- Canada ICES-003, issue 4, Class A
- UL/IEC 60950-1
- CSA C22.2 No. 60950-1-03
- Japan VCCI, Class A
- Australia/New Zealand AS/NZS CISPR 22:2006, Class A
- IEC 60950-1(CB Certificate and CB Test Report)
- Taiwan BSMI CNS13438, Class A
- Korea KN22, Class A; KN24
- Russia/GOST ME01, IEC-60950-1, GOST R 51318.22-99, GOST R 51318.24-99, GOST R 51317.3.2-2006, GOST R 51317.3.3-99
- IEC 60950-1 (CB Certificate and CB Test Report)
- CE Mark (EN55022 Class A, EN60950-1, EN55024, EN61000-3-2, EN61000-3-3)
- CISPR 22, Class A
Physical specifications
The dimensions and weight of the adapter are as follows:
- Width: 100 mm (3.9 inches)
- Depth: 80 mm (3.1 inches)
- Weight: 13 g (0.3 lb)
Shipping dimensions and weight (approximate):
- Height: 58 mm (2.3 in)
- Width: 229 mm (9.0 in)
- Depth: 208 mm (8.2 in)
- Weight: 0.4 kg (0.89 lb)
Popular configurations
The IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter is designed to be used with the IB6131 InfiniBand Switch. The following figure shows one IB6132 adapter installed in slot 2 of an p260 Compute Node, which in turn is installed in the chassis. Two IB6131 InfiniBand Switches are installed in I/O bays 3 and 4.
Figure 4. Example configuration
The following table lists the parts that are used in the configuration. The configuration also includes the FDR upgrade to upgrade all external ports to FDR (54 Gbps) speeds.
Table 5. Components used when connecting the IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter to the IB6131 InfiniBand Switches
| Machine type / feature | Description | Quantity |
| 7895-22X | IBM Flex System p260 Compute Node | 1 to 14 |
| 7895 feature A1QZ | IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter | 1 per server |
| 7893-92X | IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis | 1 |
| 7893 feature 3699 | IBM Flex System IB6131 InfiniBand Switch (in bays 3 and 4) | 1 or 2 |
| 7893 feature ESW1 | IBM Flex System IB6131 InfiniBand Switch (FDR Upgrade) | 1 or 2 |
Related publications
For more information, see the following resources:
- IBM Flex System IB6131 InfiniBand Switch Product Guide
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0871.html?Open - IBM Flex System p260 and p460 Compute Node Product Guide
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0880.html - IB6132 2-port QDR InfiniBand Adapter Installation and User Guide
http://www.ibm.com/support - IBM Flex System Interoperability Guide
http://www.ibm.com/support - IBM Redbooks® publication IBM Flex System Products and Technology, SG24-7984
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247984.html - IBM Redbooks Product Guides for IBM Flex System servers and options
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/portals/puresystems
Special Notices
This material has not been submitted to any formal IBM test and is published AS IS. It has not been the subject of rigorous review. IBM assumes no responsibility for its accuracy or completeness. The use of this information or the implementation of any of these techniques is a client responsibility and depends upon the client's ability to evaluate and integrate them into the client's operational environment.