PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE NIC & RoCE QSFP28 Adapter (FC EC3L and EC3M; CCIN 2CEC)

Learn about the specifications and operating system requirements for the feature code (FC) EC3L and EC3M adapter.

Overview

FC EC3L and EC3M are both the same adapter with different tail stock brackets. FC EC3L is a low-profile adapter and FC EC3M is a full-height adapter.

The PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE NIC & RoCE QSFP28 Adapter is a PCI Express (PCIe) generation 3 (Gen3), x16 adapter. The adapter provides two 100 Gb QSFP28 ports. The PCIe3 2-port 100 GbE (NIC and RoCE) QSFP28 Adapter supports both NIC (Network Interface Controller) and IBTA RoCE standards. RoCE is Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet. Using RoCE, the adapter can support significantly greater bandwidth with low latency. It also minimizes CPU overhead by more efficiently using memory access. This offloads the CPU from I/O networking tasks, improving performance and scalability.

Note: Each port maximum of 100 Gb assumes that no other system and or switch bottlenecks are present. The adapter allows full bandwidth for a single port in a PCIe3 slot and up to 128 Gb/s minus overheads for both ports.

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

00WT078

I/O bus architecture

PCIe3 x16

Slot requirement

For details about slot priorities, maximums, and placement rules, see PCIe adapter placement rules and slot priorities and select the system you are working on.

Voltage

3.3 V

Form factor

Short, low-profile (FC EC3L)

Short, with full-height tailstock (FC EC3M)

Cables

For 100G, IBM® offers either Direct Attach Copper (DAC) cables up to 2 M or Active Optical Cables (AOC) up to 100 M. QSFP28 based transceivers are included on each end of these cables. For more information about adapter cabling, see the Cable and transceiver matrix.

Note: For 40G, IBM® offers DAC cables up to 5 M. QSFP+ base transceivers are included on each end of these cables. See FC EB2B, EB2H, and ECBN for a 1 M, 3 M, and 5 M copper cables.

Transceivers

IBM qualifies and supports QSFP28 optical transceiver (FC EB59) to install into the adapter. Customers can also use their own optical cabling and QSP28 optical transceiver for the other end. This is a 100GBASE-SR4 based active optical transceiver capable up to 100 M through the OM4 cable or 70 M through OM3 cable. Either one or both of the adapter's two QSP28 ports can be populated. When two ports are filled, both can have copper cables or optical cables. Additionally, one of the cables can be copper and the other can be optical. IBM® also offers QSFP+ optical transceiver (FC EB27 or FC EB57) to install into the adapter and allowing the customer to use their own optical cabling and QSP28 optical transceiver for the other end.

Cable and transceiver matrix

Table 1. Cable and transceiver matrix
Feature	Description	FRU number
EB59	100Gbase-SR4 optical transceiver MTP/MPO cable (purchased separately) FC EB2J - 10 M FC EB2K - 30 M	01FT706 00VX002 00VX004
EB5J	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - .5 M	01FT718
EB5K	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 1 M	01FT719
EB5L	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 1.5 M	01FT720
EB5M	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 2 M	01FT721
EB5R	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 3 M	01FT722
EB5S	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 5 M	01FT723
EB5T	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 10 M	01FT724
EB5U	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 15 M	01FT730
EB5V	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 20 M	01FT725
EB5W	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 30 M	01FT726
EB5X	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 50 M	01FT727
EB5Y	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 100 M	01FT728
EB2B	1 M Passive QSFP+ to QSFP+	49Y7934
EB2H	3 M Passive QSFP+ to QSFP+	49Y7935
ECBN	5 M Passive QSFP+ to QSFP+	00D5809
EB27	QSFP+ 40G BASE-SR4 optical transceiver MTP/MPO cable (purchased separately) FC EB2J - 10 M FC EB2K - 30 M	49Y7928 00VX002 00VX004
EB57	QSFP+ 40G BASE-SR4 optical transceiver MTP/MPO cable (purchased separately) FC EB2J - 10 M FC EB2K - 30 M	02JD565 00VX002 00VX004

Attributes provided: The adapter is based on the Mellanox ConnectX-4 adapter, which uses the ConnectX-4 EN Network Controller; Ethernet only supported in Ethernet or RoCE mode; PCIe3 compliant (1.1 and 2.0 compatible); RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE); NIC and RoCE are concurrently supported; RoCE supported on Linux and AIX (7.2, and later); NIC supported on all operati; TCP/UDP/IP stateless offload; LSO, LRO, and checksum offload; NIM boot support; Backward compatible with 40 Gb Ethernet when using compatible cables and transceivers; Improves performance and scalability by offloading the CPU from I/O networking tasks; Minimizes CPU overhead by more efficiently using memory access; PowerVM SR-IOV support. For more information see, PowerVM® SR-IOV FAQs.

Operating system or partition requirements

If you are installing a new feature, ensure that you have the software that is required to support the new feature and you must determine any prerequisites that must be met for this feature and the attached devices. For information about operating system and partition requirements, see one of the following topics:

The latest version of enabling libraries and utilities can be downloaded from the Fix Central website.
Power Systems Prerequisites website.
IBM System Storage Interoperation Center (SSIC) website.
The latest version of the device driver or IBM® Power® RAID adapter utilities (iprutils) can be downloaded from the IBM Service and Productivity Tools website.
For information about important notices for Linux on IBM Power Systems, see the Linux® on IBM website.