IBM 520Q User Manual

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Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview 
43
2.8  External I/O subsystem
This section describes the external I/O subsystem, the 7311 D20 I/O drawer that is the only 
drawer supported on the p5-520 and p5-520Q systems.
2.8.1  I/O drawers
As described in Chapter 1, “General description” on page 1, the p5-520 or p5-520Q systems 
have six internal PCI-X slots, which is enough in many cases. If more PCI-X slots are needed 
to dedicate more adapters to a partition or to increase the bandwidth of network adapters, up 
to four 7311 Model D20 I/O drawers can be added to the p5-520 or p5-520Q systems.
The p5-520 or p5-520Q systems have a standard RIO-2 bus to connect the internal PCI-X 
slots through the PCI-X to PCI-X bridges and support up to four external I/O drawers. 
An optional RIO-2 adapter (FC 2888) is required for external RIO-2 devices, such as I/O 
drawers.
The 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer must have the RIO-2 loop adapter (FC 6417) to be 
connected to the p5-520 or p5-520Q systems. The PCI-X host bridge inside the I/O drawer 
provides two primary 64-bit PCI-X buses running at 133 MHz. Therefore, a maximum 
bandwidth of 1 GBps is provided by each bus. To avoid overloading an I/O drawer, you 
should follow the recommendation in the IBM System p5 Hardware Information Center at:
Figure  shows a conceptual diagram of the 7311 Model D20 I/O drawer subsystem.
Figure 2-10   Conceptual diagram of the 7311-D20 I/O drawer
7311 Model D20 internal SCSI cabling
A 7311 Model D20 supports hot-swappable disks using two 6-pack disk bays for a total of 12 
disks. Additionally, the SCSI cables (FC 4257) are used to connect a SCSI adapter (that can 
have various features) in slot 7 to each of the 6-packs, or two SCSI adapters, one in slot 4 
and one in slot 7 (Figure ).
R IO
133 M H z, 
64-bit PC I-X
P C I-X Bridge
1
3
P C I-X   H ost 
B ridge
2
133 M H z, 64-bit P C I-X
4
6
4
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4
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/
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P C I-X   B ridge
5
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7
6
4
/
1
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4
/
1
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3
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