Tuesday, May 6, 2008

z10 EC : OSA-Express3 and InfiniBand

Here's an addition to the original z10 EC announcement (ZG08-0289). This new z10 EC announcement (ZG08-0354) gives the availability dates for the OSA-Express3 cards and the InfiniBand coupling links.
The OSA-Express3 10 Gigabit Ethernet LR, with 2 ports per feature, was announced on February 26, 2008 and becomes available on the z10 only on May 30, 2008. The number of ports is doubled and it has improved throughput and reduced latency. As a consequence, next to some other System z features, announced here (ZG08-0355), the OSA-Express2 10 GbE LR will no longer be available on the z10 after June 30, 2008.
Not announced on February 26, 2008, but also available on May 30, 2008 is a new OSA-Express3 Gigabit Ethernet SX and LX card with four ports - as opposed to two ports on its predecessor.
The InfiniBand Coupling Links also become available on May 30, 2008. As announced earlier, they are also available on z9 EC and z9 BC S07 dedicated coupling facilities. It is called PSIFB : Parallel Sysplex using InfiniBand. These new coupling links bridge a distance of 150 meters with a throughput of 6GB/s in each direction for the z10. This connectivity is realised with 50 micron cables with new MPO connectors. It is defined with a new CHPID : CIB (Coupling using InfiniBand). Using 2 physical ports you can define 16 CHPIDs : this allows using the same physical Coupling Links for multiple sysplexes. It might be a good replacement for ISC-3 links used within the data center.
I think Balanced Power Plan Ahead is also something new. This is really not my cup of tea so I'll just quote the announcement : "Phase currents are minimized when they are balanced among the three input phases. Balanced Power Plan Ahead (#3001) is designed to allow you to order the full complement of bulk power regulators (BPRs) on any configuration, to help ensure that the configuration will be in a balanced power environment".

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