A6826A - PCI-X Dual port 2Gb/s Fibre Channel Adapter Performance Paper for PCI Platforms

Scalability
A series of tests were conducted to evaluate the scalability aspect of A6826A on various HP systems, namely
Superdome, rp8400, rp7400 and rp5450.
Chart 3a: 128KB Sequential Read
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Number of Ports
Throughput (MB/s)
Superdome
192 383 572 766 956 1147 1336 1524
rp8400
191 382 572 762 954 1144 1334 1523
rp7400
191 381 571 712 710 899 1001 1026
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2 Cell Superdome Partition with 8 (850MHz) CPUs
2 Cell rp8400 Partition with 8 (750 MHz) CPUs
rp7400 with 8 (550 MHz) CPUs
The above chart, chart 3a, shows the read throughput performance of 1, 2, 3 and 4 A6826A in Superdome,
rp8400 and rp7400. The X-axis is the number of ports. Each port represents one port of A6826A. The Y-axis is
the throughput performance in MB/s.
The chart shows excellent read throughput performance with linear scaling for 4 A6826As on Superdome and
rp8400 reaching an aggregate of 1524MB/s. Superdome and rp8400 along with A6826A offer a great
scalable and connectivity SAN solution.
On rp7400 the read throughput scales linearly up to 4 ports (2 A6826As) and reaches a plateau from 4 to 5
ports and then ascends up to 1025MB/s for 8 ports. The decline in throughput from 7 to 8 results from the IO
subsystem limitations on rp7400. rp7400 offers a good scalable and connectivity SAN solution.
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