EVALUATION BOARD
PRODUCT BRIEF
SwitchX Evaluation Board
®
Mellanox’s SwitchX Evaluation Board (EVB), based on the fifth-generation
switch silicon, accelerates time-to-market for switch and server OEMs
designing high performance, cost-effective switching and bridging solutions
for InfiniBand, Ethernet and Fibre Channel.
SwitchX silicon implements Virtual Protocol
Interconnect (VPI) and the SwitchX EVB provides
the flexibility to validate PHY, schematic and
layout characteristics for all protocols supported.
In addition, the SwitchX EVB offers a configurable
platform for protocol stack and management
software development. Paired with the Mellanox
SwitchX Software Development Kit (SDK), the
SwitchX EVB provides the materials needed to
quickly introduce an InfiniBand or Ethernet switch
system to the market.
The flexible combination of QSFP and SFP+
physical connectors, along with SwitchX’s fully
integrated PHY allows system designers the
ability to develop and validate software for Layer
2 bridging across various protocols (SDR/DDR/
QDR/FDR10/FDR InfiniBand to 1/10/40/56GbE and
2/4/8G FC as well as 1/10/40/56GbE to 2/4/8G FC)
well before custom hardware is ready for testing.
Mini
SFP+
4x
Compliancy
5dB @ 5.5GHz
Mini
SFP+
4x
Compliancy
5dB @ 5.5GHz
1x
1x
Compliancy
5dB @ 5.5GHz
1x
1x
4x
Reference
5dB @ 5.5GHz
Compliancy
5dB @ 5.5GHz
1x
1x
4x
4x
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
QSFP 1x3
QSFP 1x6
QSFP 1x3
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
QSFP 1x3
QSFP 1x6
QSFP 1x3
SFP+
SFP+
SFP+
1x
Mini
SFP+
1x
Reference
5dB @ 5.5GHz
Mini
SFP+
Mini
SFP+
Figure 1. Mellanox Evaluation Board (EVB) Port Configuration
©2013 Mellanox Technologies. All rights reserved.
1x
Reference
5dB @ 5.5GHz
1x
Reference
5dB @ 5.5GHz
Mini
SFP+
HIGHLIGHTS
BENEFITS
–– Integrated with SwitchX Software
Development Kit (SDK) for fast time-tomarket
–– Full support for Virtual Protocol
Interconnect (VPI)
–– Flexible port configuration
–– Integrated PPC CPU
–– Management PCIe bus extender to
connect to additional CPU architectures
KEY FEATURES
–– 4Tb/s Unified Switching/Routing
–– SFP+, QSFP and SMA connectors
independent of Layer 2 protocol
SwitchX Evaluation Board
page 2
SwitchX Silicon
The SwitchX silicon supports many advanced
InfiniBand and Ethernet features such as
DCB, virtualization, NPIV Fibre Channel and
Ethernet gateways as well as flexible port and
PHY configurations. SwitchX SDK running on
SwitchX EVB provides developers the capability to validate these features while porting/
developing protocol stack and management
SW.
Applications
SwitchX EVB is designed to accelerate
development of managed single and multichip
implementations for blade switches, topof-rack (TOR) switches and large port count
modular chassis aggregation switches
providing Web 2.0 and Cloud scale-out, FCoIB
and FCoE fabric convergence as well as Virtual
I/O switching.
Physical Layer Validation
SwitchX EVB implements industry standard
compliance channels for 10/40/56GbE. This
allows developers to connect directly to an
ocillscope and measure signal specification
adherence.
Utilizing software tools provided with the EVB,
developers can also tune the PHY transmit
and receive paramenters, generate PRBS and
calculate BER.
Port Configuration
SwitchX EVB allows provisionng of the
VPI ports for SDR/DDR/QDR/FDR10/FDR
InfiniBand, 1/10/20/40/56Gb/s Ethernet and
2/4/8Gig FC. The ease of provisioning via VPI
provides flexibility to validate multi-protocol
switching as well as routing and bridging
technologies prior to custom hardware being
available.
CONTENTS
–– SwitchX SDK
–– PCIe Extender Bundle
–– 1 x QSA (QSFP to SFP+ Adapter)
–– Cables
•
•
2 QSFP DAC 2m
2 SFP+ DAC 2m
–– USB; Serial; Eth
–– MTUSB
–– USB to I2C debug device
–– 4 x Standoff (for using the EVB on the
Table)
DOCUMENTATION
–– Rail Kit
–– Technical Support
–– Quick Start Guide
–– User Manual
Mellanox VPI ®I/O
Up to 36 Port FDR or 10/40/56GbE - 64 Port 10/20GbE - 24 Port 2/4/8 Gig FC
Mellanox Integrated Flex SerDes
Active/Passive Copper - Fibre - PCB - Backplane
SwitchX®
Non-blocking VPI® Switch-Router-Gateway
L2/L2+
L3
Adaptive
Routing
Mellanox IRISC Processing Engine
Congestion
Control
QoS
Routers/
Gateways
Virtualization
Management
Dual SGMII
PCIe
Figure 2. Mellanox SwitchX Architecture
Ordering Information
Ordering Part Number
InfiniBand 4X Port Speed
MT51336-EN-EVB
10/40/56 Gigabit Ethernet Evaluation Board
MT51336-VPI-EVB
FDR IB and 10/40/56 Gigabit Ethernet VPI Evaluation Board
350 Oakmead Parkway, Suite 100, Sunnyvale, CA 94085
Tel: 408-970-3400 • Fax: 408-970-3403
www.mellanox.com
© Copyright 2013. Mellanox Technologies. All rights reserved.
Mellanox, BridgeX, ConnectX, CORE-Direct, InfiniBridge, InfiniHost, InfiniScale, MLNX-OS, PhyX, SwitchX, UFM, Virtual Protocol Interconnect and Voltaire are registered trademarks of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd.
Connect-IB, CoolBox, FabricIT, Mellanox Federal Systems, Mellanox Software Defined Storage, MetroX, Open Ethernet, ScalableHPC and Unbreakable-Link are trademarks of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
3572PB Rev 1.2