NEC MH4500 manual Pentium II Xeon Processor, System Memory, I/O Expansion Slots

Pentium II Xeon Processor

The system board supports up to four Pentium II Xeon processors, each packaged in a Single Edge Contact (S.E.C.) cartridge. The cartridge includes the processor core with an integrated 16 KB primary (L1) cache; the secondary (L2) cache; a thermal plate; and a back cover. The processor implements the MMX™ technology and the processor’s numeric coprocessor significantly increases the speed of floating-point operations.

The processor external interface operates at 100 MHz. The second-level cache is located on the substrate of the S.E.C. cartridge. The cache includes burst pipelined synchronous static RAM (BSRAM). The L2 cache is offered in 512 KB and 1 MB configurations, with error correcting code (ECC) that operates at half the core clock rate.

The processors are supported by one or more voltage regulator modules (VRM) on the system board, with the number of VRMs dependent on the number of processors installed.

Each S.E.C cartridge connects to the system board through a 330-pin Slot 2 edge connector. The Slot 2 connectors are arranged in a vertical stack of four on the system board. The VRM modules are located adjacent to the processors.

System Memory

System memory is mounted on a memory module that connects to the system board. The module contains sixteen 168-pin DIMM sockets arranged in four banks. Up to 4 GB of EDO DIMM memory is supported, with 32 MB being the minimum (the system ships with a minimum of 128 MB). The memory module supports a 64/72 bit four-way-interleaved pathway to main memory on the module and supports 4:1 interleaving.

System memory begins at address 0 and is continuous (flat addressing) up to the maximum amount of DRAM installed (exception: system memory is noncontiguous in the ranges defined as memory holes using configuration registers). The system supports both base (conventional) and extended memory.

The system BIOS automatically detects, sizes, and initializes the memory array, depending on the type, size, and speed of the installed DIMMs. The BIOS reports memory size and allocation to the system via configuration registers.

The memory module connects to the system board through a 242-pin connector.

I/O Expansion Slots

The server's expansion capabilities meet the needs of file and application servers for high performance I/O by providing a combination of PCI local bus and ISA connectors.

The system board has one full-length ISA bus connector. The connector shares a chassis expansion slot with a PCI connector and supports half-length ISA boards.

System Overview 1-7