Introduction
This is the User Guide for Ethernet adapter cards based on the ConnectX®-5 and ConnectX®-5 Ex integrated circuit device for OCP Spec 3.0. 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.
Important Notes:
ConnectX-5 OCP 3.0 cards were tested for Shock & Vibe in accordance with NVIDIA specifications and setup, as the OCP spec 3.0 available at that time did not contain any S&V definitions. A newer version of the OCP spec 3.0 has defined S&V specifications and NVIDIA is in the midst of retesting these cards to comply with OCP spec 3.0.
In some of the OCP 3.0 cards, the insertion force that is required to install the card into a particular PCI connector may exceed the maximum insertion force that is allowed by the connector’s spec. NVIDIA is updating the OCP 3.0 cards to ensure the proper insertion process.
The following tables provide the ordering part number, port speed, number of ports, and PCI Express speed per ConnectX-5 and ConnectX-5 Ex OPNs.
ConnectX-5 Ex Adapter Cards for OCP 3.0
Part Number | MCX566M-GDAI | MCX565M-CDAI | MCX565M-CDAB | MCX566A-CDAI | MCX566A-CDAB |
Ethernet Data Rate | Up to 50Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s |
Network Connector Type | x2 QSFP28 ports | x1 QSFP28 port | x1 QSFP28 port | x2 QSFP28 ports | x2 QSFP28 ports |
PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0 / 4.0 x16 (a), (b) | ||||
Bracket | Internal-Lock Bracket | Internal-Lock Bracket | Pull-tab Bracket | Internal-Lock Bracket | Pull-tab bracket |
Host Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Multi-Host/ Socket Direct | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | NA | NA |
IC Part Number | MT28804A0-FCCF-CEM | MT28804A0-FCCF-CEM | MT28804A0-FCCF-CEM | MT28808A0-FCCF-CE | MT28808A0-FCCF-CE |
Device ID | 4121 for Physical Function (PF) | ||||
Form Factor Dimensions | Small Form Factor (SFF) | ||||
RoHS | RoHS Compliant | ||||
ConnectX-5 Adapter Cards for OCP 3.0
Part Number | MCX562A-ACAI | MCX562A-ACAB | MCX566A-CCAI | MCX565A-CCAB |
Ethernet Data Rate | Up to 25Gb/s | Up to 25Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s | Up to 100Gb/s |
Network Connector Type | x2 SFP28 ports | x2 SFP28 ports | x2 QSFP28 ports | x1 QSFP28 ports |
PCI Express Connectors | PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 | |||
Bracket | Internal-Lock Bracket | Pull-tab Bracket | Internal-Lock Bracket | Pull-tab Bracket |
Host Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
IC Part Number | MT27808A0-FCCF-AE | MT27808A0-FCCF-AE | MT27808A0-FCCF-CE | MT27808A0-FCCF-CE |
Device ID | 4119 for Physical Function (PF) | |||
Form Factor Dimensions | Small Form Factor (SFF) | |||
RoHS | RoHS Compliant | |||
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 Gen4.0 cards have 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.
For more detailed information see Specifications.
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 100 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. |
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. |
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 over RMII | The adapter supports a slave Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) that can be connected to a BMC. |
High-Performance Accelerations | • Tag Matching and Rendezvous Offloads |
Host Management Technology | NVIDIA’s host management technology for standard and multi-host platforms optimizes board management and power, performance and firmware update management via NC-SI, MCTP over SMBus and MCTP over PCIe, as well as PLDM for Monitor and Control DSP0248 and PLDM for Firmware Update DSP0267. |
Multi-Host Technology | NVIDIA Multi-Host™ technology, when enabled, allows multiple hosts to be connected into a single adapter by separating the PCIe interface into multiple and independent interfaces. By Using NVIDIA Multi Host™, ConnectX-5 lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO) in the data center by reducing CAPEX (cables, NICs, and switch port expenses), and by reducing OPEX by cutting down on switch port management and overall power usage. With NVIDIA Multi-Host™ technology powered by a shared buffer architecture, connection-tracking offloads, and RoCE enhancements, ConnectX-5 offers an extremely flexible solution for today’s demanding data center and cloud application. |
NVIDIA Socket Direct™ | NVIDIA Socket Direct technology brings improved performance to multi-socket servers by enabling direct access from each CPU in a multi-socket server to the network through its dedicated PCIe interface. With this type of configuration, each CPU connects directly to the network; this enables the interconnect to bypass a QPI (UPI) and the other CPU, optimizing performance and improving latency. CPU utilization improves as each CPU handles only its own traffic, and not the traffic from the other CPU. NVIDIA’s OCP 3.0 cards include native support for socket direct technology for multi-socket servers and can support up to 4 CPU sockets. |
Wake-on-LAN (WoL) | Supported |
Reset-on-Lan (RoL) | Supported |
RHEL/CentOS
Windows
FreeBSD
VMware
OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED)
OpenFabrics Windows Distribution (WinOF-2)
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