Cisco UCSX-410C-M7= Hyperscale Compute Node:
Quantum-Scale Hardware Architecture The ...
Component Identification and Functional Role
The UCSX-M2-PT-FPN= is a PCIe fabric passthrough module designed for Cisco’s UCS X-Series modular systems. Cross-referencing Cisco’s UCS X9508 documentation and itmall.sale’s technical listings reveals its role in enabling non-blocking, direct-attach connectivity between compute nodes and peripheral devices. This module is critical for high-performance workloads requiring low-latency access to GPUs, FPGAs, or NVMe-oF storage arrays, bypassing traditional fabric switch layers.
Technical Specifications and Architectural Design
Hardware Architecture
- PCIe Gen4 x16 lanes per slot: Supports up to 64 GT/s bidirectional bandwidth for accelerators like NVIDIA A100 or Intel Agilex FPGAs.
- Dual-port NVMe-oF offload: Reduces host CPU overhead by 40% via Cisco’s Fabric Processing Node (FPN) ASIC.
- Hot-swappable design: Tool-less installation in UCS X9508 chassis slots 1–4, with N+1 redundancy support.
Firmware and Protocol Support
- Cisco UCS Manager 4.3(2a)+: Required for dynamic lane partitioning and SR-IOV virtualization.
- NVMe/TCP and RoCEv2: Hardware-accelerated protocol termination for 25G/100G Ethernet fabrics.
Addressing Core Deployment Concerns
Q: How does this differ from traditional fabric interconnects?
The UCSX-M2-PT-FPN= eliminates intermediate switching hops by:
- Direct GPU-to-CPU mapping: Achieves <500ns latency for NVIDIA GPUDirect RDMA workloads.
- Bypassing UCS Fabric Interconnects: Reduces east-west traffic congestion in AI training clusters.
Q: What’s the maximum device density per chassis?
- 4x modules per UCS X9508: Supporting 64 PCIe Gen4 endpoints (16 per module).
- Mixed-width slots: Allocate x8 lanes to FPGAs while reserving x4 lanes for Optane PMem buffers.
Q: Can legacy Gen3 devices operate in Gen4 slots?
Yes, but with 30% bandwidth penalty due to protocol translation overhead. Cisco recommends firmware 4.3(3d)+ for auto-negotiation stability.
Enterprise Use Cases and Optimization
AI/ML Training Clusters
- Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) partitioning: Share A100 GPUs across 7 Kubernetes pods with isolated PCIe lanes.
- TensorFlow/PyTorch pipeline optimization: Achieve 94% RDMA utilization via FPN’s congestion control algorithms.
High-Frequency Trading (HFT)
- FPGA-based market data processing: Process 10M market ticks/sec with deterministic <1μs jitter.
- NVMe-oF Journaling: Dedicate x8 lanes to Kioxia FL6 SSDs for persistent order book storage.
Lifecycle Management and Compliance
Firmware and Security
- FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Compliance: Secure boot and hardware-rooted trust for financial sector deployments.
- Predictive Failure Analysis: Cisco Intersight monitors PCIe lane BER (Bit Error Rate), triggering alerts at 1e-15 thresholds.
Regulatory Certifications
- NEBS Level 3: Validated for telecom edge deployments with -40°C to 70°C operational range.
- RoHS/REACH: Full compliance for EU market deployments.
Procurement and Validation
For enterprises requiring validated configurations, UCSX-M2-PT-FPN= is available here. itmall.sale provides:
- Pre-certified cable kits: Including 100G AOC (Active Optical Cables) with <0.2dB insertion loss.
- Latency benchmarking reports: Covering NVMe-oF TCP/RoCEv2 performance under 90% load.
Strategic Implementation Insights
While the UCSX-M2-PT-FPN= revolutionizes bare-metal performance in UCS X-Series, its dependency on PCIe Gen4 limits backward compatibility with Gen3-based FPGA farms. Enterprises running mixed workloads should prioritize lanes for latency-sensitive tasks while consolidating storage traffic on fewer modules. The FPN ASIC’s 40% CPU offload makes it indispensable for cloud-native environments—though teams must retrain staff on Intersight’s passthrough topology views. For HPC clusters, pairing this module with NVIDIA’s Quantum-2 InfiniBand could yield 12% higher MPI efficiency, but at the cost of Cisco’s end-to-end manageability.