Compaq 307560-001 Compaq ProLiant 2500 Server Technology - Page 8

201A/1196 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ... Processors The ProLiant 2500 uses the Intel 82440 FX chip set and is designed to support up to two Pentium Pro processors. The server comes standard with a single 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor with an integrated 16-Kbyte L1 cache (8 Kbyte for data and 8 Kbyte for instructions) and an integrated 256-Kbyte L2 cache. The 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor provides the next-generation performance required for Microsoft Windows NT and NetWare applications. The integrated L2 cache runs at processor speed and is protected by Error Checking and Correcting (ECC) code. The L2 cache has a 4-way set-associate cache memory organization, which is an extension of the 2-way structure. In the ProLiant 2500, the total cache memory is divided into four banks (or ways) of equal size rather than two banks, and main memory is divided into logical pages equal to the size of the four banks. This structure provides four ways that data from the same physical address in main memory can be stored in cache, thereby increasing flexibility of the cache and increasing cache hit rate. In typical applications, the higher cache hit rate allows the Pentium Pro L2 cache to outperform 2way caches that are twice as large. For specific information about ProLiant 2500 performance, refer to the Compaq performance summary titled ProLiant 2500 TPC-C Performance. Intel Pentium Pro processors have precise voltage requirements; therefore, systems based on the Pentium Pro processors need to provide dedicated regulators for each processor (and for the processor support chips). The ProLiant 2500 includes a Compaq Processor Power Module for each processor. The Processor Power Module determines the precise voltage requirement of the processor and the support chip set and ensures that the proper voltage is delivered to each. The ProLiant 2500 can be upgraded by adding a second 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor with an L2 cache of either 256 Kbytes or 512 Kbytes. The Compaq ProLiant 2500 Processor Option Kit contains both a 200-MHz Pentium Pro processor with 256-Kbyte L2 cache and the Compaq Processor Power Module needed for the upgrade. Compaq strongly recommends use of this kit to upgrade the ProLiant 2500 because Pentium Pro processors purchased from third-party vendors may not fully meet the specifications for use in the ProLiant 2500. In the ProLiant 2500, the second processor can be configured in either of two ways: • as an idle backup processor to increase availability, or • as a second active processor to boost processing power as well as availability. Customers running operating systems capable of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) would most likely configure both processors as active. Use of an idle backup processor would be most common among customers running a non-SMP-capable Netware operating system. Compaq recommends configuring the second processor as active whenever possible to take advantage of the increased processing power. Use of a second processor in the ProLiant 2500 increases availability by providing the means for rapid recovery in the event of a processor failure. Recovery from a processor failure in the ProLiant 2500 requires rebooting the system. If during system configuration the Automatic Recovery Server feature of the ProLiant 2500 is enabled, restarting the server after a processor failure will be automatic. If a processor fails, the server will record the failure in the Server Health Logs and attempt to reboot the system. With a successful reboot, the second processor will automatically assume the load of the failed processor. 8