PCIe3 2-port 10 GbE NIC & RoCE SFP+ copper adapter (FC EC37, FC EC38, FC EL3X, and FC EL53; CCIN 57BC)

Learn about the specifications and operating system requirements for the feature code (FC) EC37, FC EC38, FC EL3X, and FC EL53 adapters.

Overview

The FC EC37 and FC EL3X are low-profile adapters, and the FC EC38 and FC EL53 are full-height adapters.

The PCIe3 2-Port 10 GbE NIC & RoCE SFP+ adapter is a PCIe generation-3 (PCIe3), dual port, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapter with a PCIe 3.0 host bus interface. The adapter provides two 10 Gb SFP+ ports for copper twinax cabling. These cables also include copper transceivers. 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.

Active Copper twinax cables up to 5 meter in length are supported such as provided by FCs EN01, EN02 or EN03. A copper transceiver is included with these cables. See Cables for details. Each 10 Gb port provides Ethernet connectivity with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbps (gigabits per second).

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 & RoCE SFP+ copper adapter (FC EC37 and FC EL3X)
PCIe3 LP 2-port 10 GbE NIC & RoCE SFP+ copper adapter (FC EC37 and FC EL3X)
Figure 2. PCIe3 2-port 10 GbE NIC and RoCE SFP+ copper adapter (FC EC38 and FC EL53)
PCIe3 2-port 10 GbE NIC & RoCE SFP+ copper adapter (FC EC38 and FC EL53)

Specifications

Item
Description
Adapter FRU number
00RX859
Low-profile tailstock: 00RX856
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
See Cables for details.

Cables

This adapter feature requires the use of compatible SFP+, 10 Gbps, copper, twinaxial, active, Ethernet cables. See Figure 3 for a view of the cable top and cable bottom. These cables are compliant with industry standard specifications SFF-8431 Rev 4.1 and SFF-8472 Rev 10.4, and all applicable IBM® requirements.
Note: These cables are EMC Class A compliant.
See Table 1 for details about the feature codes.
Figure 3. Top and bottom view of the cable
Image of the Cable
Table 1. Feature code, CCIN, and part number for varying lengths of the cable
Cable length Feature code CCIN Part number
1 m (3.28 ft) EN01 EF01 46K6182
3 m (9.84 ft) EN02 EF02 46K6183
5 m (16.4 ft) EN03 EF03 46K6184

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: