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Chipsets in Servers

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Servers usually have a much higher workload compared to the average home

computer because they serve multiple users at the same time. Hence, demands

placed on servers are such that they require specialized hardware to perform

efficiently. One critical component that determines their performance is the

server chipset. The chipset of a motherboard is a set of chips placed on it,

which control the flow of information between different components of the

system, like the processor, memory, and I/O devices. In this article, we’ll

take a look at this foundation of server motherboards.

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Many times, a single processor is unable to satisfy the computation needs of

a high-load server. In such cases, the need for more processors arises.

Unfortunately, putting in multiple processors is not as easy as it sounds. The

chipset is assigned the difficult job of coordinating all these different

processors to reduce redundancy and take care of the integrity of the system.

This feature is called SMP, or Symmetric Multi Processing. This provides fast

processing by making multiple CPUs available to individual processes

simultaneously. SMP support is available in most chipsets targeted towards

server systems. For instance, the Intel 815 chipset, which is aimed at the

desktop, doesn’t have support for SMP, while the 840 supports two processors,

and the 440GX supports up to four processors.

Home computers currently use a 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI bus. This gives PCI devices

a total bandwidth of 132 MB/sec at their disposal. However, this can limit the

performance of certain cards. For instance, there are 64-bit network cards and

server management cards that require higher bandwidth to give peak performance.

So server chipsets include support for 64-bit and 66 MHz PCI bus, which

effectively quadruples the bandwidth available. The Samurai chipset from Micron,

for example, supports this feature.

Hard-disk data transfer rates can also be a severe bottleneck in the

performance of a server. Almost all servers use SCSI hard drives, which provide

much higher bandwidth compared to IDE drives. Lately the trend has been to

include high-speed SCSI controllers on the motherboard itself to eradicate the

need of putting in PCI cards to perform the same function. The latest SCSI

standard, Ultra 160 supports data transfer speeds up to 160 MB/sec.

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Before the processor can execute a process, it needs to be loaded into the

memory. If the amount of memory is not enough, processes are continuously

switched between the memory and hard drive to make room for new processes. This

can greatly reduce performance. So most people try to cram in as much RAM as

possible into the system. However, the amount of memory one can put into a

system is limited by the chipset. Whereas most home computers are limited to a

maximum of 512 MB, it is not uncommon to see support for gigabytes of memory in

server systems. The 440GX, for example, supports up to 2 GB of memory.

Finally, something that is generally better in a home computer compared to

servers– sound and video. Since what generally matters more in a server is the

number of people you can host, rather than the number of frames it can pump out

in



Quake III, people stick to relatively old and trusted equipment here. Most
server boards therefore come with on-board video.

Anuj Jain

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