HP ProLiant 2500 Compaq ProLiant 2500 Server Technology - Page 10

201A/1196 TECHNOLOGY BRIEF (cont.) ... I/O The ProLiant 2500 is optimized for PCI to support the growing I/O needs of departments and remote sites. The I/O backplane contains six PCI slots, four of which are shared PCI/EISA slots to provide backward compatibility with existing EISA controllers. Because the PCI controllers for video, network interface, and storage are integrated in the ProLiant 2500, all six expansion slots remain available for other uses. The ProLiant 2500 contains a high-performance, integrated 10/100 TX Ethernet Network Interface Controller (NIC) on the PCI local bus for high-performance network throughput. This NIC features the Compaq/TI ThunderLAN chip set, the NetFlex-3 Network Driver Suite, and autosensing capabilities. It can accurately transfer information at either 10 megabits per second or at 100 megabits per second. The 10/100 TX Ethernet NIC automatically senses the required data speed and adjusts its transfer rate to match. Because this controller comes integrated in the ProLiant 2500, it meets customer requirements for higher bandwidth now, increases reliability, saves customers the cost of purchasing and installing a 100 Mb/s TX upgrade module later, and leaves a PCI slot open to support other network topologies such as Token Ring and 100VGAnyLAN. To provide cabling options, the ProLiant 2500 processor board contains both an RJ-45 and an AUI connector. The RJ-45 connector runs either at 10 megabits per second or at 100 megabits per second. The AUI connector runs at 10 megabits per second. An optional AUI-to-BNC transceiver (Compaq Part Number 192732) can be used to convert the AUI connection to a BNC connection for customers using coaxial Ethernet cable. This transceiver is provided in most international Compaq country kits. The ProLiant 2500 contains 1 megabyte of 256K x 16, 70-nanosecond video DRAM and an integrated Cirrus Logic PCI video controller (Cirrus 54M30) that supports 256 colors at a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. The ProLiant 2500 is the first Compaq server to support a hot-pluggable keyboard. This feature is advantageous for deploying the server at remote sites. Storage In today's networking environments the storage subsystem is a key contributor to overall server performance. In designing the ProLiant 2500, Compaq incorporated the latest Ultra SCSI technology. The ProLiant 2500 includes the new integrated Compaq Wide-Ultra SCSI Controller with the Symbios 875 controller chip as a standard feature. This PCI-based controller fully supports the SCSI and SCSI-2 devices in use today, and it is driver upgradable to support Ultra SCSI devices when they become available. This means that customers deploying ProLiant 2500 servers now will not have to invest in a new controller to support Ultra SCSI devices expected to be available in 1Q97. The Wide-Ultra SCSI Controller boosts bus speed by effectively doubling Fast-Wide SCSI transfer rates. Fast-Wide SCSI Wide-Ultra SCSI Data Path 16-bit 16-bit Transfer Rate 20 MB/s 40 MB/s 10