IBM EC2N PCIe3 2-Port 10GbE NIC and RoCE SR Adapter

Overview

The IBM EC2N (CCIN 57BE) is a high-performance, dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) converged network adapter built on the PCI Express Generation 3 (PCIe3) x8 interface. It is specifically engineered to deliver high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency data transfers for enterprise IBM Power Systems deployments. By utilizing RoCE (Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet), it unloads network I/O tasks directly from the host CPU to specialized onboard hardware, significantly optimizing system resource utilization and memory scaling.

Technical Specifications

Parameter	Specification Details
Feature Code (FC)	EC2N (Full-Height version) / EC2M (Low-Profile version)
CCIN	57BE
FRU Part Number	00RX875 (Complies with international RoHS environment standards)
Base PCB / Alternative P/N	00RX881 / 00RX871
Bus Interface	PCI Express 3.0 x8 (PCIe3 x8 standard slot compliance)
Form Factor	Short card, equipped with a Full-Height (FH) tailstock bracket
Data Transfer Rate	Dual ports, each operating at a nominal line rate of 10 Gbps
Operational Voltage	3.3 V

Connectivity & Media Specs

• Interface Architecture: Converged Network Adapter (CNA) core structure.

• Integrated Transceivers: The adapter comes pre-configured with two preinstalled 10Gb Short-Range (SR) optical transceivers.

• Connector Core: Dual Little Connector (LC) duplex optical interfaces.

• Cabling Medium: Links to standard 10-Gb SR multimode optical fiber (MMF) cabling.

• Maximum Loop Distance: Supports long-distance infrastructure runs up to 300 meters (984.25 feet).

• Fault Tolerance: Built-in hardware support for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) and automated system failover topologies for high-availability cluster deployments.

Protocols & Hardware Offloading

Important Co-existence Constraint:

The adapter supports both standard stateless NIC routing operations and advanced IBTA RoCE functions; however, both modes cannot execute concurrently on the same physical port interface.

Supported Standards & Layer 2/3 Features

• InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA): Native RoCE v2 compliance for zero-copy memory transfers over IP/Ethernet blocks.

• Ethernet Standards: IEEE 802.3ae (10 GbE transmission rules) and internal processing for Ether II / IEEE 802.3 encapsulation layers.

• Traffic Control & Virtualization:

  • IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging structures.

  • IEEE 802.1p Quality of Service (QoS) class prioritization across tagged virtual boundaries.

  • IEEE 802.3x Flow Control.

• Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU): Jumbo Frame structures supported up to 9.6 KB payloads.

Network Offload Mechanisms

• Checksum Execution: Hardware offloading for TCP/UDP checksum calculations over both IPv4 and IPv6 network packages.

• Segmentation Offloads: Hardware-based Large Send Offload (LSO) and TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO).

• Interrupt Delivery: Message Signal Interrupts (MSI) and advanced high-density MSI-X vector distribution to distribute core assignments.

Operating System & Hardware Compatibility

Supported Systems

• IBM Power8 Scale-Out & Enterprise Nodes: Native deployment in primary or expansion drawer slots (e.g., S822, S824, E850, E870, E880 setups, or inside the EMX0 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer framework).

• IBM Power9 Systems: Downstream slot integration supporting legacy PCIe Gen3 architectural assignments.

Minimal Operating System Versioning

• IBM AIX:

  • AIX 7.1 with Technology Level 3, Service Pack 5 (7100-03-05) plus APAR IV68444 (or later).

  • AIX 6.1 with Technology Level 9, Service Pack 5 (6100-09-05) plus APAR IV68443 (or later).

  • Note: Supports AIX Network Installation Management (NIM) workflows.

• VIOS: Virtual I/O Server 2.2.3.51 or later. (Note: VIOS mappings support standard NIC capabilities only; RoCE pass-through is constrained).

• Linux for Power:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Version 6.6 / 7.1 or downstream iterations.

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Version 12 or newer.

  • Ubuntu Linux 15.04 or later versions.