The Design And Research Of Server Mainboard Based On Intel Nehalem-ep

Blade server is a HAHD (High Availability High Density, high-availability high-density) server platform, designed for apecial application industry and high-density computer environments. Each piece of "blade" is actually a system mainboard, they can use the "onboard" hard disk to start their own operating system. Administrator can integrate these mainboards to a server cluster to share resource by using some system Software. In the cluster mode, all of the mainboard can be connected together to provide high-speed network environment, while sharing resources, serving for the users. We can improve the overall performance by inserting a new "blades" into the cluster. Since each "blades" are hot-plug, so the system can easily be replaced, and the maintenance time will be reduced to a minimum. These blade servers have much excellent features such as low power consumption, small space occupation, low price for each single device and so on.These design are able to meet the requirements of intensive computing environments on the server performance needs. Some can even effectively improve the stability of the server and core network performance through the built-in load balancing technology. Blade server can maximize the use of saving server space and costs, and provide users with flexible, convenient ways of extension or upgrade.This paper describes a hardware design of the blade server mainboard based on Intel Nehalem-ep quad-core processors and the Tylersburg 36D, ICH10 Chipset which will be first release at the first quarter of 2009.The board will be used for the next generation of high-performance commercial blade server mainboard and have the following three aspects functions: processing functions, interface functions and board management functions.This paper have also focused on the high-speed signal integrity on the board and what problems we should pay attention to in the PCB layout, production and processing technology in detail.We have succeeded in producing and debugging the mainboard, and completed the performance test for the board following the design in the paper. These may have universal significance for developing the next generation high-performance server board. In the end of paper, we have made a summary and analysis towards the blade mainboard which we designed and the current situation of the entire blade server at home and abroad, and and also points out the prospects for development of server industry.