User's Manual

Chapter 2: Hardware setup2-10
2.3.3 Memory mirroring and sparing technology
The Intel
®
5100MCH chipset supports the memory sparing technology. Refer to the
below section:
Memory Sparing
At conguration time, a DIMM rank is set aside to replace a defective DIMM rank.
When the error rate for a failing DIMM rank reaches a pre-determined threshold,
the memory sparing function will issue an interrupt and initiate a spare copy. At the
completion of the copy, the failing DIMM rank is disabled and the “spared” DIMM rank
will be used in its place. Refer to section 5.4.3 Chipset and congure the options of
Channel Rank Sparing or Channel 1 Rank Sparing to enable the memory sparing
functions. The default BIOS setting is disabled.
• Each channel contains its own sparing engine and can be enabled or
disabled separately.
• This motherboard does not support rank sparing across channels.
• The DIMM rank with the largest size will be assigned as spare rank. Data
can only be copied from a smaller sized rank to a larger sized one.
• A DIMM can contain only one or two ranks. To support sparing function, a
DIMM channel should contain at least two ranks.
• When sparing function is enabled, the usable memory size will reduce the
size of the spare ranks.
The following tables show memory congurations with Memory Sparing function in
Channel A/B.
One DIMM per channel (two ranks)
Channel B Channel A
DIMM_B1
(1024MB*2 Ranks)
DIMM_A1
(1024MB*2 Ranks)
Rank 0
(1024 MB)
Rank 1
(1024 MB)
Rank 0
(1024 MB)
Rank 1
(1024 MB)
Sparing
Memory space 1024 MB 1024 MB
Total Memory 2048 MB