Sun Microsystems CP3240 manual 5Expansion Fabric Switch Subsystem

2.4.4Expansion Fabric Switch Subsystem

FIGURE 2-5Expansion Fabric Switch Subsystem

PICMG 3.0 AdvancedTCA provides an agnostic mesh on the backplane called the Expansion Fabric. This interface is the data plane in the shelf. The Expansion Fabric is called “Fabric” in this guide. This fabric can be several different technologies defined by AdvancedTCA sub-specifications. The Sun Netra CP3240 switch is designed to comply with PICMG 3.1 Ethernet/Fibre Channel for AdvancedTCA Systems, options 1 and option 9. That means the Sun Netra CP3240 switch provides a single 1/10Gigabyte port to each node board.

The Fabric uses 10GBase-BX4 Ethernet to provide connectivity between boards though the backplane. The Fabric can scale down to 1Gigabyte and work with 1000Base-BX boards. The Fabric subsystem is based around two main components: the Broadcom BCM56800 and the Freescale MPC8247.

2-24Sun Netra CP3240 Switch Installation Guide • September 2009