PCIe3 LP 2-Port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SR Adapter (FC EC2M, FC EC2N, and FC EL54; CCIN 57BE)

Learn about the specifications and operating system requirements for the feature codes (FC) EC2M, EC2M, EC2N, and EL54 adapters.

Overview

FC EC2N and FC EL54 are full-height adapters. FC EC2M is a low-profile adapter. The names of these two adapters are:
  • FC EC2N and FC EL54: PCIe3 2-Port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SR adapter
  • FC EC2M: PCIe3 LP 2-Port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SR adapter

This PCIe generation 3 adapter provides two 10 Gb SR optical fiber ports. The adapter is a converged network adapter supporting both NIC and IBTA RoCE standard. RoCE is Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet. Using RoCE, the adapter can support significantly greater bandwidth with low latency and minimize CPU overhead by more efficiently using memory access. This offloads the CPU from I/O networking tasks, improving performance and scalability.

The adapter has two preinstalled optical transceivers. Little connector (LC) type connectors connect the adapter to standard 10-Gb SR optical cabling and provide up to 300 m (984.25 ft) cable length. The two transceiver ports are used for connectivity with other servers or switches in the network. Each port provides Ethernet connectivity with a nominal data rate of 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). The link aggregation and failover features of the adapter are ideal for critical network applications that require redundancy and high availability. Figure 1 shows the low-profile adapter and Figure 2 shows the full-height adapter.

The adapter provides the following features:
  • The adapter is a PCIe3 NIC network convergence adapter.
  • The adapter supports RoCE and NIC functions but not concurrently on same adapter.
  • The adapter supports the following standards for the different ports and functions:
    • AIX NIM and Linux Network Install are supported
    • IBTA RoCE v2 support
    • IEEE 802.3ae in the 10 GbE ports
    • 802.3ab in the 1 GbE ports
    • Ether II and IEEE 802.3 for encapsulated frames
    • 802.1p for setting up priority levels in tagged VLAN frames
    • 802.1Q for VLAN tagging
    • 802.3x for flow control
    • 802.3ad for load-balancing and failover
    • IEEE 802.3ad and 802.3 for link aggregation
  • The adapter provides message signal interrupts (MSI), MSI-X, and support of legacy pin interrupts.
  • The adapter supports jumbo frames up to 9.6 KB.
  • The adapter supports gigabit EtherChannel (GEC) with the existing software.
  • The adapter supports TCP checksum offload transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagram protocol (UDP), TCP segmentation Offload (TSO) for IPv4 and IPv6.
  • Supports TCP segmentation or large send offload
  • Supports EEPROM-SPI and single EEPROM
Figure 1. PCIe3 LP 2-Port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SR adapter (FC EC2M)
FC EC2M adapter
Figure 2. PCIe3 2-Port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SR adapter (FC EC2N and FC EL54)
FC EC2N and FC EL54 adapter

Specifications

Item
Description
Adapter FRU number
00RX875
Low-profile tailstock: 00RX872
I/O bus architecture
PCIe3 x8
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
Cables
Supports standard 10-Gb SR optical cabling and up to 300 m (984.25 ft) cable length.

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: