Super P 4 Dc 6 example essay topic

THE SUPERMICRO P 4 DC 6 MOTHERBOARD Introduction The super micro P 4 DC 6 Motherboard is a server motherboard that has the most up-to-date specifications and features. The PC motherboard was first introduced in 1960, when Digital Equipment introduced the first minicomputer (PC). The PDP-1, which sold for US$120,000, was the first commercial computer equipped with a keyboard and monitor. This motherboard was MUCH larger than the ones we see today. Today's motherboards are merely one-tenth the size of the one's in 1960. The SUPER P 4 DC 6 is a little bigger than the normal ATX (8" x 10.5") at 12" x 13".

The SUPER P 4 DC 6 is an extended ATX form factor (as stated earlier the extended is larger) motherboard. Using the latest Intel technology in the form of the i 860 chip set means stability and reliability will be in the forefront of this board features. The Intel i 860 chip set utilizes the new modular design of the 800 family of chip sets. Like other 800 series chip sets, the Intel i 860 chip set has two core components. The first half is the 82860 Memory Controller Hub (MCH), which is the main interface to the processor host bus, the memory, and graphics interface.

This is scalable design architecture with many benefits. The second half of this chip set, the 82801 BA I / O Controller Hub (ICH 2) delivers twice the I / O (input / output) bandwidth over traditional bridge architecture and provides dedicated data paths, which fully optimizes the additional bandwidth available for improved performance across the board. A pre fetch cache (stores what it thinks your next process will be before you do it), integrated into the Intel i 860 chip set, allows highly efficient data flow and also helps to minimize system inconsistencies enhancing stability in the board's performance. The P 4 DC 6 utilizes Dual Intel 603 Xeon CPU's in speeds from 1.5 GHZ - 2.0 GHZ, and will allow higher speed processors at the BIOS through flash updates. The i 860 chip set supports a 400 MHZ system bus which is quad piped 100 MHZ FSB that uses the dual channel 600/800 MHZ RDRAM (Rambus Dynamic Read Only Memory) with memory transfer rates as high as 3.2 GB / 's. Due to the large power requirements and to ensure system stability, a 400 W (min.) ATX 12 V power supply (with both 4-pin and 8-pin +12 V power connected) is required for operating the SUPER P 4 DC 6 correctly.

There are many main parts of the SUPER P 4 DC 6 motherboard, but the 3 main parts discussed in this paper are the memory slots, chip set and integrated I / O ports. Figure 1.0 - SUPER P 4 DC 6 MotherboardDiscussionThe memory slots The memory slots are made of highly heat resistant plastic (see Figure 1-1) with gold pin connectors lining the middle of the slot from end to end (see Figure 1-2). As well, there are tabs (one on each side) that hold on to the RAM when it is installed (see Figure 1-3). These tabs are also made of plastic and are very small in size. The memory slots hold 184- pin SIMM RDRAM with a total of 4 slots available on the SUPER P 4 DC 6 motherboard. The slots are made specifically for this type of memory module (RDRAM) and are directly related to the PCI bus, thus shouldn't be any other RAM.

Figure 1.1-RDRAM slots Figure 1.2-Gold contacts Figure 1.3-Tabs Chipset The chip set is a hard thin plastic (see Figure 2-1) chip, which coat millions of transistors squeezed inside. These transistors pass the data through gold plated pins (see figure 2-2) from the chip to the board. The pins connect directly onto the motherboard (see Figure 2-3), making them fully integrated to the board. The chips on the SUPER P 4 DC 6 both look identical on the exterior by shape and texture, but are different in size. The 82860 MCH is 1.6 cm x 1.6 cm and the 82801 BA is 1.1 cm x 1.1 cm. They also have very different purposes, as stated in the intro.

Figure 2.1- Plastic cover Figure 2.2-Pins Figure 2.3-Connectors on board Integrated USB I / O port The USB port is 1 cm wide x 1/3 cm high and is a metal rectangle (see Figure 3-1) with a thin straight plastic divider in the upper half of the port (see figure 3-2). This is used as a guide as wells as to keep the pins from connecting with the wrong side. There are four gold plated pins (see Figure 3-3) that integrated to the metal casing. Two of the pins are slightly longer than the other two and are the power pins. The other two pins are the data pins. The pins are like this so that no matter what the device gets power before the data is sent (creating an error).

This is also because the USB port is for "Plug and Play" devices (can just plug it in and use it right away). Figure 3.1-Metal port Figure 3.2-Plastic divider Figure 3.3-Pins Conclusion SUPERMICRO has definitely come up with a super motherboard in the P 4 DC 6, a feature filled board that offers the user a wide range of flexibility in its configuration options. This system never bat an eye at anything done when running real world applications including being used as a game server with many users accessing the machine at the same time. The ability to use the new 10,000 RPM SCSI drives makes access times almost quicker than you can click the buttons when working in the Windows environment. Even when multitasking with many different applications running the system never missed a beat which was quite impressive making this a very reliable multi tasking product.

For just raw power this system will be hard to beat, SUPERMICRO did one hell of a job with this motherboard.