Product Overview
This is the User Guide for Ethernet adapter cards based on the ConnectX®-5 and ConnectX®-5 Ex integrated circuit device. These adapters connectivity provide the highest performing low latency and most flexible interconnect solution for PCI Express Gen 3.0/4.0 servers used in Enterprise Data Centers and High-Performance Computing environments.
The following provides the ordering part number, port speed, number of ports, and PCI Express speed. Each adapter comes with two bracket heights - short and tall.
ConnectX-5 Ex Ethernet Adapter Cards
| Model | ConnectX-5 Ex Ethernet Adapter Cards | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Part Number | MCX512A-ADAT | MCX516A-BDAT | MCX516A-CDAT |
| Ethernet Data Rate | 1/10/25 Gb/s | 1/10/25/40 Gb/s | 10/25/40/50/100 Gb/s |
| Network Connector Type | Dual-port SFP28 | Dual-port QSFP28 | Dual-port QSFP28 |
| PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0/4.0 x16 (a), (b) | ||
| Dimensions | 2.71 in. x 5.6 in. (68.90mm x 142.24 mm) – low profile | ||
| RoHS | RoHS Compliant | ||
| IC Part Number | MT28808A0-FCCF-EV | ||
a. PCIe 4.0 x16 bus can supply a maximum bandwidth of 256Gb/s (=16 *16GT/s, including overhead), and can support 200Gb/s when both network ports of the card run at 100Gb/s.
b. The MCX516A-CDAT card has been tested and certified with PCIe 3.0 servers. PCIe 4.0 interface will be tested when servers with Gen 4.0 support become available.
ConnectX-5 Ethernet 25Gb/s Adapter Cards
| Model | ConnectX-5 Ethernet Adapter Cards | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part Number | MCX512A-ACAT | MCX512A-ACUT | MCX512F-ACAT | MCX512F-ACHT |
| Ethernet Data Rate | 1/10/25 Gb/s | |||
| Network Connector Type | Dual-port SFP28 | |||
| PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 | PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 | ||
| Dimensions | 2.71 in. x 5.6 in. (68.90mm x 142.24 mm) – low profile | |||
| Host Management | - | - | - | √ |
| UEFI Enabled (x86/Arm) | - | √ | - | √ |
| RoHS | RoHS Compliant | |||
| IC Part Number | MT27808A0-FCCF-EV | |||
ConnectX-5 Ethernet 50Gb/s Adapter Cards
| Model | ConnectX-5 Ethernet Adapter Cards | |
|---|---|---|
| Part Number | MCX515A-GCAT | MCX516A-GCAT |
| Ethernet Data Rate | 10/25/40/50 Gb/s | |
| Network Connector Type | Single-port QSFP28 | Dual-port QSFP28 |
| PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 | |
| Dimensions | 2.71 in. x 5.6 in. (68.90mm x 142.24 mm) – low profile | |
| Host Management | - | - |
| UEFI Enabled (x86/Arm) | - | - |
| RoHS | RoHS Compliant | |
| IC Part Number | MT27808A0-FCCF-EV | |
ConnectX-5 Ethernet 100Gb/s Adapter Cards
| Model | ConnectX-5 Ethernet Adapter Cards | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part Number | MCX515A-CCAT | MCX515A-CCUT | MCX516A-CCAT | MCX516A-CCHT |
| Ethernet Data Rate | 10/25/40/50/100 Gb/s | |||
| Network Connector Type | Single-port QSFP28 | Single-port QSFP28 | Dual-port QSFP28 | Dual-port QSFP28 |
| PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 | |||
| Dimensions | 2.71 in. x 5.6 in. (68.90mm x 142.24 mm) – low profile | |||
| Host Management | - | - | √ | |
| UEFI Enabled (x86/Arm) | - | √ | - | √ |
| RoHS | RoHS Compliant | |||
| IC Part Number | MT27808A0-FCCF-EV | |||
For more detailed information see Specifications.
Features and Benefits
This section describes hardware features and capabilities. Please refer to the relevant driver and/or firmware release notes for feature availability.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| PCI Express (PCIe) | Uses PCIe Gen 3.0 (8GT/s) and Gen 4.0 (16GT/s) through an x8 or x16 edge connector. Gen 1.1 and 2.0 compatible. |
| Up to 25 Gigabit Ethernet | NVIDIA adapters comply with the following IEEE 802.3 standards: • 100GbE/ 50GbE / 40GbE / 25GbE / 10GbE / 1GbE |
| Memory |
|
| Overlay Networks | In order to better scale their networks, data center operators often create overlay networks that carry traffic from individual virtual machines over logical tunnels in encapsulated formats such as NVGRE and VXLAN. While this solves network scalability issues, it hides the TCP packet from the hardware offloading engines, placing higher loads on the host CPU. ConnectX-5 effectively addresses this by providing advanced NVGRE and VXLAN hardware offloading engines that encapsulate and de-capsulate the overlay protocol. |
| RDMA and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) | ConnectX-5, utilizing IBTA RDMA (Remote Data Memory Access) and RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) technology, delivers low-latency and high-performance over Band and Ethernet networks. Leveraging data center bridging (DCB) capabilities as well as ConnectX-5 advanced congestion control hardware mechanisms, RoCE provides efficient low-latency RDMA services over Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks. |
| NVIDIA PeerDirect™ | PeerDirect™ communication provides high-efficiency RDMA access by eliminating unnecessary internal data copies between components on the PCIe bus (for example, from GPU to CPU), and therefore significantly reduces application run time. ConnectX-5 advanced acceleration technology enables higher cluster efficiency and scalability to tens of thousands of nodes. |
| CPU Offload | Adapter functionality enabling reduced CPU overhead allowing more available CPU for computation tasks. Open vSwitch (OVS) offload using ASAP2(TM) • Flexible match-action flow tables • Tunneling encapsulation/decapsulation |
| Quality of Service (QoS) | Support for port-based Quality of Service enabling various application requirements for latency and SLA. |
| Hardware-based I/O Virtualization | ConnectX-5 provides dedicated adapter resources and guaranteed isolation and protection for virtual machines within the server. |
| Storage Acceleration | A consolidated compute and storage network achieves significant cost-performance advantages over multi-fabric networks. Standard block and file access protocols can leverage RDMA for high-performance storage access. • NVMe over Fabric offloads for the target machine • Erasure Coding • T10-DIF Signature Handover |
| SR-IOV | ConnectX-5 SR-IOV technology provides dedicated adapter resources and guaranteed isolation and protection for virtual machines (VM) within the server. |
| NC-SI | The adapter supports a Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI), MCTP over SMBus and MCTP over PCIe - Baseboard Management Controller interface. |
| High-Performance Accelerations | • Tag Matching and Rendezvous Offloads • Adaptive Routing on Reliable Transport • Burst Buffer Offloads for Background Checkpointing |
| UEFI Enabled | Enabled in MCX516A-CCHT and MCX512F-ACHT. |
Operating Systems/Distributions
- RHEL/CentOS
- Windows
- FreeBSD
- VMware
- OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED)
- OpenFabrics Windows Distribution (WinOF-2)
Connectivity
- Interoperable with 1/10/25/40/50/100 Gb/s Ethernet switches
- Passive copper cable with ESD protection
- Powered connectors for optical and active cable support
