IBM 990 - Manual (Page 110)

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zSeries 990 Technical Guide
FICON Express SX feature
The z990 FICON Express SX feature (feature code 2320) occupies one I/O slot in the z990
I/O cage. The feature has two Peripheral Component Interconnect cards. Each PCI card has
a single port supporting an LC Duplex connector, with one PCHID associated with each port,
and supports link speeds of 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps.
Each port supports attachment to the following:
Fibre Channel Switch that supports 1 Gbps/2 Gbps Fibre Channel/FICON SX
Control unit that supports 1 Gbps/2 Gbps Fibre Channel/FICON SX
Each port of the z990 FICON Express SX feature uses an 850 nanometer (nm) fiber
bandwidth transceiver. The port supports connection to a 62.5 micron or 50 micron multimode
fiber optic cable terminated with an LC Duplex connector.
FICON channel in Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) mode
When configured for FCP mode, the FICON Express features can access FCP devices either:
Via a FICON channel in FCP mode through a single Fibre Channel switch or multiple
switches to an FCP device
Via a FICON channel in FCP mode through a single Fibre Channel switch or multiple
switches to a Fibre Channel-to-SCSI bridge
z990 adapter interruptions enhancement for FCP
The z990 servers, Linux for zSeries, and z/VM work together to provide performance
improvements by exploiting extensions to the Queued Direct Input/Output (QDIO)
architecture. Adapter Interruptions, first added to z/Architecture with HiperSockets, provide an
efficient, high-performance technique for I/O interruptions to reduce path lengths and
overhead in both the host operating system and the adapter - FICON Express, when using
the FCP CHPID type.
In extending the use of adapter interruptions to FCP channels, the programming overhead to
process a traditional I/O interruption is reduced. This benefits FCP support in Linux for
zSeries.
Note: Mode Conditioning Patch (MCP) cables are for use with 1 Gbps (100 MBps) links
only .
Multimode (62.5 or 50 micron) fiber optic cable may be used with the z990 FICON Express
LX feature for 1 Gbps
only . The use of this multimode cable type requires a Mode
Conditioning Patch (MCP) cable to be used at each end of the fiber optic link, or at each
optical port in the link. Use of the single-mode to multimode MCP cables reduces the
supported optical distance of the 1 Gbps link to an end-to-end maximum of 550 meters.
Fiber optic conversion kits and Mode Conditioning Patch (MCP) cables are not
orderable as features on z990. Fiber optic cables, cable planning, labeling, and
installation are all customer responsibilities for new z990 installations and upgrades.
IBM Fiber Cabling Services offer total a cable solution service to help with your cable
ordering needs, and is highly recommended.
Note: z990 FCP channel direct attachment in point-to-point and arbitrated loop topologies
is not supported as part of the zSeries FCP enablement.