Front cover IBM Power Systems S812LC Technical Overview and Introduction Alexandre Caldeira Marc-Eric Kahle Gerard Saverimuthu K. C. Vearner Redpaper International Technical Support Organization IBM Power Systems S812LC Technical Overview and Introduction December 2015 REDP-5284-00 Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in “Notices” on page vii. First Edition (December 2015) This edition applies to the IBM Power Systems S812LC (8348-21C). © Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2015. All rights reserved. Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp. Contents Notices . vii Trademarks . viii IBM Redbooks promotions . ix Preface . xi Authors. xii Now you can become a published author, too! . xii Comments welcome. xiii Stay connected to IBM Redbooks . xiii Chapter 1. Architecture and technical description . 1 1.1 Power S812LC server . 2 1.2 Server features . 2 1.2.1 Power S812LC server features. 3 1.2.2 Minimum features . 4 1.3 Operating system support . 4 1.4 Linux operating system . 4 1.4.1 Ubuntu . 4 1.4.2 Red Hat. 5 1.4.3 SUSE . 5 1.4.4 Additional information . 5 1.5 Operating environment . 5 1.6 Physical package . 6 1.7 System architecture . 6 1.8 The IBM POWER8 processor . 9 1.8.1 POWER8 processor overview. 9 1.8.2 POWER8 processor core . 11 1.8.3 Simultaneous multithreading. 12 1.8.4 Memory access. 12 1.8.5 On-chip L3 cache innovation and Intelligent Cache . 13 1.8.6 L4 cache and memory buffer . 14 1.8.7 Hardware transactional memory . 16 1.8.8 Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface . 16 1.9 Memory subsystem . 17 1.9.1 Memory buffer chips . 18 1.9.2 Memory placement rules. 19 1.9.3 Memory bandwidth . 21 1.10 System bus . 23 1.11 Internal I/O subsystem . 25 1.12 Slot configuration . 25 1.13 System ports . 26 1.14 PCI adapters . 26 1.14.1 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express . 26 1.14.2 LAN adapters . 27 1.14.3 Fibre Channel adapters . 27 1.14.4 InfiniBand host channel adapter . 28 1.14.5 CAPI adapters. 28 1.15 Internal storage . 29 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2015. All rights reserved. iii 1.15.1 Disk and media features . 32 1.15.2 RAID support . 33 1.16 External I/O subsystems . 35 1.17 IBM System Storage . 35 1.18 Java. 37 Chapter 2. Management and virtualization . 39 2.1 Main management components overview. 40 2.2 Service processor . 40 2.2.1 Open Power Abstraction Layer . 41 2.2.2 Intelligent Platform Management Interface . 41 2.2.3 F Petitboot bootloader. 41 2.3 IBM PowerVC . 42 2.3.1 Benefits . 42 2.3.2 New features. 42 2.3.3 Lifecycle . 43 Chapter 3. Reliability, availability, and serviceability. 45 3.1 Introduction . 46 3.1.1 RAS enhancements of POWER8 processor-based scale-out servers . 46 3.2 IBM terminology versus x86 terminology . 47 3.3 Error handling . 47 3.3.1 Processor core/cache correctable error handling . 47 3.3.2 Processor Instruction Retry and other try again techniques . 48 3.3.3 Other processor chip functions . ..