PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC75 and EC76; CCIN 2CFB)

Overview

FC EC75 is a low-profile adapter and FC EC76 is a full-height adapter.

The PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE x16 adapter is a PCI Express (PCIe) generation 4 (Gen4) x16 adapter. The adapter provides two 100GbE En ConnectX-6 DX QFSP56 ports. The PCIe4 2-port 100GbE RoCE En ConnectX-6 DX QFSP56 adapter supports both NIC (Network Interface Controller) and IBTA RoCE standards. RoCE stand for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet. Using RoCE, the adapter can support significantly greater bandwidth with low latency. It also minimizes the CPU overhead by more efficiently using memory access. This process offloads the CPU from I/O networking tasks, improving performance and scalability.

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

02CM921

I/O bus architecture

PCIe4 2-port 100 GbE RoCE x16 adapter (FC EC66 and EC67; CCIN 2CF3)

PCIe4 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.

Cables

For 100G, IBM® offers either Direct Attach Copper (DAC) cables up to 2 M or Active Optical Cables (AOC) up to 50 M. Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) based transceivers are included on each end of these cables. For more information about adapter cabling, see the Cable and transceiver matrix.

Transceivers

IBM qualifies and supports QSFP optical transceiver (FC EB59) to install into the adapter. You can also use your own optical cabling and QFSP56 optical transceiver for the other end. This is a 100GBASE-SR4 based active optical transceiver is available up to 100 M through the OM4 cable or 70 M through OM3 cable. Either one or both of the two QFSP56 ports on the adapter can be populated. When two ports are filled, both ports can have copper cables or optical cables. Additionally, one of the cables can be copper and the other can be optical.

Cable and transceiver matrix

Table 1. Cable and transceiver matrix

Feature	Description
EB59	100GBASE-SR4 optical transceiver MTP/MPO cable (purchased separately) FC EB2J - 10 M FC EB2K - 30 M
EB5J	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - .5 M
EB5K	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 1 M
EB5L	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 1.5 M
EB5M	QSFP28 Passive Copper 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 2 M
EB5R	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 3 M
EB5S	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 5 M
EB5T	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 10 M
EB5U	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 15 M
EB5V	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 20 M
EB5W	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 30 M
EB5X	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 50 M
EB5Y	QSFP28 AOC 100 Gb Ethernet Cable - 100 M
EB2B	1 M Passive QSFP+ to QSFP+
EB2H	3 M Passive QSFP+ to QSFP+
EB27 or EB57	QSFP+ 40G BASE-SR4 optical transceiver MTP/MPO cable (purchased separately) FC EB2J - 10 M FC EB2K - 30 M

Voltage

3.3 V, 12 V

Form factor

Short, low-profile (FC EC75)

Short, with full-height tailstock ( FC EC76)

Attributes provided

PCI Express 4.0 (up to 16GT/s) x16

PCIe Gen 4.0 compliant (1.1, 2.0, and 3.0 compatible)

RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)

Dual-port of 100 Gb/s Ethernet per port

NIC and RoCE are concurrently supported

RoCE supported on Linux and AIX (7.2, and later)

NIC supported on all operating systems

TCP/UDP/IP stateless offload

LSO, LRO, and checksum offload

NIM boot support

The adapter is based on the Mellanox ConnectX-6DX adapter, which uses the ConnectX-6DX EN Network Controller

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

Operating system or partition requirements