Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
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or feature on top of the IVE card assembly itself. Another key goal is the support of all the
state-of-art NIC functionality provided by leading Ethernet NIC vendors.
IVE offers the following functions with respect to virtualization:
Up to 32 logical ports identified by MAC address
Sixteen MAC addresses are assigned to each IVE port group.
Each logical port can be owned by a separate LPAR
Direct data path to LPAR
Function enablement per LPAR
Default send and receive queues per LPAR
Ethernet MIB and RMON counters per LPAR
VLAN filtering per logical port (4096 VLANs * 32 Logical Ports)
Internal layer 2 switch for LPAR to LPAR data traffic
Multicast / Broadcast redirection to Multicast / Broadcast manager
IVE relies exclusively on the system memory and CEC processing cores to implement
acceleration features. There is not a requirement of dedicated memory, thus reducing the cost
of this solution and providing maximum flexibility. IVE Ethernet MACs and acceleration
features consume less than 8 mm
2
of logic in CMOS 9SF technology.
IVE does not have flash memory for its open firmware but it is stored in the Service Processor
flash and then passed to POWER Hypervisor (PHYP) control. Therefore flash code update is
done by PHYP.
2.8 PCI adapters
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PCIe uses a serial interface and allows for
point-to-point interconnections between devices using directly wired interface between these
connection points. A single PCIe serial link is a dual-simplex connection using two pairs of
wires, one pair for transmit and one pair for receive, and can only transmit one bit per cycle. It
can transmit at the extremely high speed of 2.5 Gbps, which equates to a burst mode of 320
MBps on a single connection. These two pairs of wires is called a lane. A PCIe link may be
comprised of multiple lanes. In such configurations, the connection is labeled as x1, x2, x8,
x12, x16 or x32, where the number is effectively the number of lanes.
IBM offers PCIe adapter options for the 570, as well as PCI and PCI-extended (PCI-X)
adapters. All adapters support Extended Error Handling (EEH). PCIe adapters use a different
type of slot than PCI and PCI-X adapters. If you attempt to force an adapter into the wrong
type of slot, you may damage the adapter or the slot. A PCI adapter can be installed in a
PCI-X slot, and a PCI-X adapter can be installed in a PCI adapter slot. A PCIe adapter cannot
be installed in a PCI or PCI-X adapter slot, and a PCI or PCI-X adapter cannot be installed in
a PCIe slot. For a full list of the adapters that are supported on the systems and for important
information regarding adapter placement, see
PCI Adapter Placement
, SA76-0090. You can
find this publication at :
https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/lib03030.nsf/pages/pHardwarePublicatio
nsByCategory?OpenDocument&pathID=
