Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER 2500 Manual - Page 4

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Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER Enterprise Servers

which also supported up to 128 processors, but required additional cabinets for configurations of more

than 64 CPUs and for I/O extension.

The PRIMEPOWER 2500's system boards do not include any internal PCI slots, but they each connect

up to two PCI/disk boxes. This means a 64-way version can support up to 16 PCI/disk boxes, and a 128-

way server can support up to 32 PCI/disk boxes. The 64-way supports up to 256GB of memory, and the

128-way supports up to 512GB. The 2500 has two redundant Level-2 crossbars connecting the two

backplanes to which the system boards are attached. If one crossbar fails, the system will isolate the

faulty components and automatically restart with a reduced configuration (and half the bandwidth). Each

backplane is clocked at 520MHz and has a sustained throughput of 66.5 GB/second giving 133

GB/second throughput across the Level-2 crossbars in total. The 2500 also has dual redundant system

clocks.

RAS Features

The 2500 has the highest levels of availability features in the PRIMEPOWER product line, but there are

extensive levels of error checking and automatic error correction built into the SPARC64 V processor. As

well as error checking and correcting (ECC) memory, all three XA models also have ECC checking on the

data path and on the PCI bridges.

The SPARC64 V has some unique error-correcting features for a reduced instruction set computer (RISC)

processor. There is parity checking at the register and execution unit level. If an intermittent parity error

occurs, there is automatic instruction retry by the hardware. If the retries are unsuccessful and parity

errors continue to appear, the system will automatically "degrade" the processor configuration, removing

the faulty processor from the active configuration. The Level-2 (L2) cache has ECC protection (double-bit

error detection and single-bit error correction) for both data and tags. The Level-1 (L1) caches have ECC

protection for data, while L1 tags are duplicated and immediately corrected if a parity error is detected. All

this is handled automatically by the hardware without the intervention of the operating system (OS).

Hardware error logs are collected during operation, however, and reported to the System Control Facility

(SCF). There are over 90,000 monitors on a 32-way PRIMEPOWER model 2500 when the system is

running. Any error events are reported automatically via the Call-home feature.

The Solaris operating system supports dynamic reconfiguration, so that a system board can be logically

detached from a partition and powered down—partitions can only be powered down at the system board

or PPAR level, however, not at the XPAR level (see below). Likewise, PCI boards that are part of the

system board on the 900 and 1500 can only be logically detached and physically replaced as part of the

whole system board. Individual PCI adapters can be hot-plugged, however, and Solaris supports I/O

multipathing to allow redundant I/O connections.

XPAR

The PRIMEPOWER XA models feature two types of hard partitions. PPARs are the more usual form of

hard partitioning created at the system board boundaries. They are similar to Sun's Dynamic System

Domains and HP's nPars (hard partitions). The PRIMEPOWERs' PPARs consist of complete eight-way

system boards. XPARs are also hard partitions, but they allow more granularity than PPARs. Switching on

the system board allows it to be divided up into two or four XPAR hard partitions. The most granular

XPAR on the 900 and 1500 can thus consist of two CPUs and 1GB of memory. This means that hard

partitions on the PRIMEPOWER XA models can not only span complete system boards, but can also

include part system boards (see figure). Clients should note that on the PRIMEPOWER 2500, granularity

is limited to four CPUs.

Figure 1: PRIMEPOWER XPARs and PPARs

DPRO-97941

17 April 2003