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Dell™ PowerEdge™ M710 Technical Guidebook
20
SECTION 7. CHIPSET
A. Overview / Description
The PowerEdge M710 planar incorporated the Intel 5520 chipset (code named Tylersburg) for I/O and
processor interfacing. Tylersburg is designed to support Intel's 5500 series processors (code named
Nehalem-EP),QPIinterconnect,DDR3memorytechnology,andPCIExpressGeneration2.The
Tylersburg chipset consists of the Tylersburg-36D IOH and ICH9.
The Intel 5520 chipset (code named Tylersburg) I/O Hub (IOH)
The planar uses the The Intel
®
5520 chipset (code named Tylersburg) I/O Hub (IOH)-36D IOH to provide
a link between the 5500 series 2S processor (Nehalem EP) and I/O components. The main components
oftheIOHconsistoftwofull-widthQuickPathInterconnectlinks(onetoeachprocessor),36lanesof
PCI Express Gen2, a x4 Direct Media Interface (DMI), and an integrated IOxAPIC.
IOH QuickPath Interconnect (QPI)
TheQuickPathArchitectureconsistsofserialpoint-to-pointinterconnectsfortheprocessorsandthe
IOH.ThePowerEdgeM710hasatotalofthreeQuickPathInterconnect(QPI)links:onelinkconnecting
the processors and links connecting both processors with the IOH. Each link consists of 20 lanes
(full-width) in each direction with a link speed of up to 6.4 GT/s. An additional lane is reserved for a
forwardedclock.DataissentovertheQPIlinksaspackets.
TheQuickPathArchitectureimplementedintheIOHandCPUsfeaturesfourlayers.ThePhysicallayer
consists of the actual connection between components. It supports Polarity Inversion and Lane Reversal
for optimizing component placement and routing. The Link layer is responsible for flow control and the
reliabletransmissionofdata.TheRoutinglayerisresponsiblefortheroutingofQPIdatapackets.Finally,
the Protocol layer is responsible for high-level protocol communications, including the implementation of
a MESIF (Modify, Exclusive, Shared, Invalid, Forward) cache coherence protocol.
Intel Direct Media Interface (DMI)
The DMI (previously called the Enterprise Southbridge Interface) connects the Tylersburg IOH with the