HPE Mellanox MCX512F-ACHT Ethernet 10/25Gb 2-Port SFP28 Adapter

Overview

The HPE P13188-B21 (utilizing the Mellanox ConnectX-5 EN chip architecture, model MCX512F-ACHT) is a high-performance, dual-port 10/25 Gigabit Ethernet adapter designed specifically for enterprise-level data centers, cloud infrastructures, and high-density virtualization environments. Equipped with a Full-Height (FH) bracket, this PCIe network interface card offers line-rate throughput, ultra-low latency, and hardware-accelerated processing offloads to optimize modern hybrid cloud and high-performance computing (HPC) workflows.

Technical Specifications

Parameter	Specification Details
HPE Option Part Number	P13188-B21
HPE Spare Part Number	P16004-001
Controller Architecture	NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-5 EN (MCX512F-ACHT)
Data Transfer Rate	Dual ports, each supporting 25 Gbps or 10 Gbps
Bus Interface	PCI Express 3.0 x16 (Backward compatible with standard PCIe slots)
Form Factor	Standard Plug-in Card with Full-Height (FH) tailstock bracket
Physical Interfaces	2 x SFP28 (Small Form-factor Pluggable 28) cages
Network Technology	10GBASE-SR/LR, 25GBASE-SR/LR, Active Optical (AOC), Direct Attach Copper (DAC)

Connectivity & Media Options

The SFP28 ports feature full backward compatibility with standard SFP+ components, providing maximum deployment flexibility:

• 25Gb Operation: Uses 25G SFP28 Short Range (SR) / Long Range (LR) optical transceivers or 25G Direct Attach Copper (DAC) twinax cables.

• 10Gb Operation: Uses 10G SFP+ Short Range (SR) / Long Range (LR) optical transceivers or 10G Direct Attach Copper (DAC) twinax cables.

• Distance Support: Up to 100 meters over OM4 multi-mode fiber (25G SR) or up to 5 meters using passive twinax copper configurations.

Hardware Offloads & Advanced Protocols

Advanced Cloud & Virtualization Acceleration:

ConnectX-5 technology features advanced ASIC-level hardware accelerators that dramatically reduce host CPU overhead for modern network encapsulation protocols and storage architectures.

1. Storage-over-Ethernet Offloads

• RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE): Full hardware support for RoCE v1 and RoCE v2, delivering zero-copy, low-latency memory transfers directly between server clusters.

• iSER / NVMe-oF: Accelerates iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) and NVMe over Fabrics protocols for high-speed SAN arrays.

2. Virtualization & Software-Defined Networking (SDN)

• ASAP² (Accelerated Switch and Packet Processing): Offloads Open vSwitch (OVS) data plane tasks to the hardware interface without degrading CPU performance.

• Overlay Network Encapsulations: Hardware-based stateless offloading for VXLAN, NVGRE, and GENEVE protocol routing.

• SR-IOV Support: Single Root I/O Virtualization enabling up to 512 Virtual Functions (VF) per adapter.

3. Stateless Network Enhancements

• TCP/UDP/IP Checksum Offload (IPv4 and IPv6 implementations).

• Large Send Offload (LSO) and TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO).

• Receive Side Scaling (RSS) and Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC).

• Jumbo Frame support up to 9.6 KB (9,600 bytes) payloads.

Operating System & Platform Compatibility

Compatible Servers

Optimized for corporate deployments inside HPE ProLiant Gen10 Plus and Gen11 architectures:

• HPE ProLiant DL Series: DL20, DL110, DL325, DL345, DL360, DL365, DL380, DL385 (Gen10 Plus / Gen11 models)

• HPE ProLiant ML Series: ML30, ML350 (Gen10 Plus / Gen11 models)

• HPE Apollo / XL Series: XL220n, XL225n, XL290n, XL645d (Gen10 Plus)

Operating System Support

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and newer

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x, 8.x, 9.x

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12, 15

• VMware vSphere / ESXi 6.7, 7.0, 8.0, and newer

• Canonical Ubuntu Server LTS