MV/60000 HA

As far as I know, the MV/60000 (and the slightly later MV/25000) represented both the peak (in terms of performance) and last shout of the MV/Family. DG was moving towards ‘Open Systems’ which at this time meant the new AViiON line running DG/UX.

Marketing

[Copied from www.dg.com in 1997]

Features And Benefits

• Powerful, fully expandable, sixth-generation ECLIPSE MV/Family multiprocessor
  • Delivers high-performance computing power for commercial, scientific, and technical applications
  • Offers incremental upgrade from one to six job processors
• Full compatibility with other MV/Family systems
  • Supports cost-effective system growth
  • Preserves customers' hardware and software investment
• High availability features, including support of redundant power and cooling, repair-under-power capabilities, and internal error checking
  • Greatly increases availability and minimizes downtime for critical transaction and data processing requirements
• Supports up to 512 MB of interleaved, ERCC memory in 64-MB, 128-MB and 256-MB increments
  • Allows flexible, cost-effective system growth
  • Lets memory-intensive applications achieve full use of processor capability
• Dedicated diagnostic processor
  • Increases efficiency and lowers maintenance costs by initiating remote diagnostics automatically to pinpoint hardware or software problems
• Multichannel, high-performance, Input/Output Subsystem
  • Supports the full range of Burst Multiplexor Channel and Data Channel peripherals
• Operates under the AOS/VS II operating system
  • Provides sophisticated, multiuser, multiprogram, time-sharing system
  • Supports both interactive and multiple batch environments
• CLARiiON and MRC I/O Subsystems
  • Offers RAID technology and highly available I/O capabilities

The MV/60000 HA Series represents the powerful sixth-generation of ECLIPSE MV/Family systems. Fully compatible with previous generations of ECLIPSE systems, the ECLIPSE MV/60000 HA provides the latest technology, while maintaining compatibility both at the hardware and software levels. This allows customers to acquire new system features and higher levels of performance, without changing software or peripheral support. The MV/60000 HA offers outstanding performance, configurability, reliability, and high-availability features. This multiprocessor configuration offers up to six processors, six I/O channels and 1 GB of memory, allowing customers to start out with an entry level system with the assurance that substantial growth is possible.

Each job processor provides about 30 Dhrystone MIPS. An improved cache design offers excellent scaling performance as additional job processors are added. Built entirely of ECL components, the single board processor provides enhanced reliability and diagnostic features. A new chassis design, in which boards are plugged into both the front and back of the midplane, keeps physical distances small and makes it possible to run the entire system at a 25ns clock speed.

The base level package consists of a two-bay cabinet. The right (system) bay contains the processors, memory, and I/O controllers, while the left (power and I/O) bay contains 28 general-purpose I/O slots and all of the power supplies and regulators for both. For configurations that require more than three IOCs, a third (I/O expansion) bay is available. This expansion bay provides 30 additional I/O slots for further system growth. All of the bays incorporate a range of enhanced design and environmental features and use the same styling and color scheme as the existing 11000 Series cabinets.

System Overview

System Bay

The system bay is divided into three sections. The center section, the MV/60000 HA system cabinet, houses the midplane and has a total of 11 slots. Of these 11 slots, one containes the system bus controller and two are reserved for I/O subsystem bridges, leaving eight slots for either job processors or memory boards. Four of these may contain onnly job processors, two may contain memory boards, and two slots can be used for either additional memory or for additional job processors, depending on what configuration provides the best performance in a given situation.

The MV/60000 HA, with the maximum of six job processors, can support 512 MB of memory; a five-processor system can support up to 768 MB, and with four or fewer processors, up to 1 GB of memory is available.

The I/O subsystem bridge provides an electronic and logical connection from the MV/60000 HA system bus to the MV/60000 HA I/O bus.

There are two additional slots on the I/O bus. The first contains the DP/IOC0 board. The diagnostic processor (DP) is responsible for monitoring and controlling the operation of the overall system, while IOC0 is the first I/O channel. The second slot is for a system bus board (SBB), which can contain one or two IOC daughter boards.

Power and I/O Bay

The power and I/O bay provides all the support functions to the system bay including:

• AC electrical connection
• 60V semi-regulated DC current to the power regulators
• Power regulators to provide controlled DC power to the system backplane and midplane
• Battery backup
• 28 ECLIPSE I/O slots in three logically separate chassis

The 28 I/O slots in the bay are divided into three electrically separate backplanes with ten, nine, and nine slots. The nine slots on the right are always connected to the IOC0, and the ten slots on the left belong to IOC1. With two IOCs, the middle nine slots will be jumpered to the IOC0 slots, for a total of 18. If a third IOC is configured, these nine slots will be connected to IOC2 instead, providing the flexibility to add IOCs as required for performance reasons, and still have all slots available.

I/O Expansion Bay

For expansion purposes, a third I/O bay provides an additional 30 I/O slots. These slots are provided in groups of ten. The first ten (counting from the left) are assigned to IOC3, the right ten to IOC4, and the middle ten to IOC5 (if present), or to IOC3.

System High Availability

The MV/60000 HA system has many built-in, high availability features and is designed to offer the highest possible reliability for a processor of its performance level. For example, by utilizing high-density gate arrays, fewer components are on a single board, and fewer components mean fewer failures. The use of a single board with fewer connectors and shorter signal paths also offers greater overall reliability.

High-availability features like the diagnostic processor, dual data busses, redundant cooling, redundant power, multiple memory modules, and battery backup make the MV/60000 HA system an excellent platform for delivering high availability to ECLIPSE system users.

If the diagnostic processor detects a fatal error it will attempt an emergency shutdown, isolate the failing component, and run diagnostics on the suspected failing component. Once the failed component is deconfigured, AOS/VS II will reboot the system.

Since the system will run with a single bus, dual data busses provide high bus bandwidth and improved performance scaling as additional processors are added.

Each MV/60000 HA cabinet has redundant cooling blowers. If a failure should occur, the remaining blowers have sufficient capacity to cool a fully loaded cabinet and prevent a blower failure from affecting system operations.

Power converters are configured in parallel, and are “N+1” redundant. They can be repaired on-line so that system failure will not be affected by the failure of one of the units. Power regulators are also “N+1” redundant, thus protecting system operation.

A battery backup unit allows the system to recover from short power fluctuations.

System Components

Job Processor

The job processor (JP) for the MV/60000 HA is built entirely with ECL components. The processor board is a 15- inch by 15-inch printed circuit board that uses several new design technologies. The board uses a “MULTIWIRE” design and contains 16 layers, including some resistor planes that are buried within the board itself. With multiwire technology, some layers contain insulated wires that can cross each other and run diagonally in addition to vertically and horizontally. This allows more direct routing and reduced signal path lengths to support higher clock speeds.

The logic of the processor itself is contained in six semicustom Motorola ECL gate arrays that run at a clock speed of 25ns. Four of the arrays are high power arrays, and employ a unique “heat pipe” to maintain proper chip cooling. The other two arrays use complex heat sink designs for cooling. In addition to the high-speed arrays, 3ns and 5ns ECL Static RAM chips are used for caches and control store.

Memory

The MV/60000 HA main memory is available in 64-MB, 128-MB and 256-MB memory modules. The memory RAM chips are individually segmented into four logically separate memory areas for improved interleaving in an individual module.

Each memory module contains four separate memory controllers. Any controller can use any memory bank so overall throughput of the module is substantially improved. The results from multiple memory requests to the same module will be handled by different controllers. The use of multiple controllers allows requests to be satisfied in a different order than received, further improving system performance.

I/O Subsystem Bridge

The ISB consists of a pair of printed circuit boards which are mechanically and electronically connected. The function of the ISB is to provide bi-directional traffic between the system bus and the I/O bus. The first ISB is configured with every system and provides support for the DP/IOC0 board, and one or two additional IOCs. The second ISB is included with the I/O expansion cabinet.

DP/IOC0

Serving two separate functions, the DP/IOC0 board contains the diagnostic processor and IOC0. Each I/O controller provides full support for BMC (Burst Multiplexor Channel) and DCH (Data Channel) I/O. The BMC is designed for high-speed block transfers of data to and from disks and tapes. The medium-speed DCH provides the facility for data transfers to or from character-oriented controllers such as those for asynchronous and synchronous communications.

SBB – IOC1/IOC2

The System Bus Board (SBB) provides an interface to the bus for the IOC boards. One or two IOC daughter boards are connected to the SBB, which connects them to the I/O bus.

Diagnostic Processor

The MV/60000 HA has a dedicated processor designed to implement built-in diagnostics and configuration features. It supervises/manages all functional units in the system and provides a user-friendly operator interface.

Power-up diagnostics- During a system power-up, or upon reset, the DP invokes a comprehensive suite of built-in diagnostics. These diagnostics are designed to test individual Field Replaceable Units (FRUs).

System Configuration Management - Once power-up testing is complete, the DP will configure and initialize the system. Components that fail power-up tests will be deleted from the configuration. Components that fail during normal system operation will cause the DP to log the failure, invoke diagnostics, deconfigure the component, and reboot the operating system.

User Interface - The DP provides a friendly user interface to the system manager and field service representative. An RS-422 operators console and an RS-232 Remote Assistance Center modem interface are available.

Mass Storage

ECLIPSE MV/60000 HA systems have a maximum on-line disk storage capacity of 1920 gigabytes on the BMC channels if six IOCs are configured. This maximum configuration is based on two MV disk arrays per controller and two controllers per I/O channel. Disk arrays can be configured with a maximum of 80 GB per array.

CLARiiON Subsystem

A new approach to data availability for ECLIPSE systems is the CLARiiON disk array. Using RAID technology, data and parity information can be stored together and distributed over several different disks in a way that preserves all of the data in the event of a loss of a disk. The data from the missing disk can be reconstructed dynamically from the data and parity information stored on other disks in the group. When the failed disk is replaced, its data can be permanently reconstructed and written to the new disk without any loss of system availability. The complete reconstruction of the data on the replacement disk can happen on-line, without any loss of system operations.

MRC Subsystem

The MRC is a nearly fault tolerant I/O subsystem. It provides a highly reliable I/O channel that supports peripheral sharing from multiple MV/Family systems, system-to-system application communications with connection server software, and a number of high-availability features. These include the availability of on-line diagnostics and repair and complete hardware redundancy with the MRC subsystems. When multiple MV/Family systems are connected to the same MRC, any system can serve as a backup system for any other since they all have physical access to the same disks and data.

Supported Peripherals

The ECLIPSE MV/60000 HA also supports the full range of mass storage products for BMC/DCH MV/Family processors through a high-performance SCSI-2 controller. These products are packaged in the rackmount Combined Storage Subsystem/3 chassis and include:

• 520-MB, 1-GB, 2-GB, and 4-GB 3.5-inch disks
• 320-MB/525-MB QIC cartridge tapes
• 7-GB (native)/14-GB (compressed) 8-mm helical scan cartridge tape
• 4-GB (native)/8-GB (compressed) 4-mm helical scan cartridge tapes
• The CLARiiON tape array subsystem provides a very high-speed, high-capacity backup device with RAID-like high-availability features and data compression.

Reel-to-reel tape drives include 1600-bpi streaming, 800/1600-bpi, 1600/6250-bpi, and 800/1600/6250-bpi units.

Connectivity And Communications

Asynchronous Communications

When low-cost terminal connections are required, the MV/60000 HA systems can utilize intelligent asynchronous controllers (IACs) for direct terminal and printer connections. Available in eight- and 24-line versions, IACs provide high-performance asynchronous connectivity to ECLIPSE MV/Family processors. A maximum of 5736 physical asynchronous ports can be configured on IACs.

Also available for the MV/60000 HA is the Multi-Communications Processor (MCP/1) which features eight asynchronous ports (two with modem control), two synchronous ports, and a parallel line printer interface.

For multihost environments with a higher number of users, the TermController products (TermServer and TermManager) offer a single-vendor solution that satisfies Ethernet LAN-based terminal server requirements. TermController products allow asynchronous devices to communicate to host computers over an Ethernet LAN. Each ITC/128A supports 128 active terminal sessions. TermController products are key elements of a multisystem, high-availability environment where users need to switch host systems easily and quickly.

Synchronous Communications

The MV/60000 HA system uses an intelligent synchronous controller (ISC/2) to handle high-speed synchronous communications. It supports a maximum of 16 synchronous ports (eight ISC/2s). Synchronous communications ports are also available with the MCP-1.

LAN Communications

Local area network functionality on the MV/60000 HA is provided through the Intelligent Local Area Network Controller (ILC-2) and the Intelligent Ring Controller (IRC). A maximum of four LANs are supported on the system.

Networking

Data General offers a full range of industry-standard communications and networking products for multivendor environments, including a DG/OSI product suite, TCP/IP software, IBM connectivity products, DG/PC*I, NetWareR, DG/NETBEUI, and OpenMAC. Wide Area Networks are also supported.

UNIX Interoperability

Data General’s communications and networking products also link ECLIPSE MV/Family computers with AViiON servers and workstations and DASHER PCs. Data General offers a set of solutions that allows AOS/VS II and UNIX users to transparently access and share applications, information, and resources, allowing them to take advantage of the best of both platforms. AOS/VS II provides the optimal platform for interoperability related products.

Software

The MV/60000 HA is supported by the AOS/VS II operating system. AOS/VS II is a sophisticated, multiuser, multiprogram time-sharing system that supports both interactive and multiple batch environments. With this operating system, programs are developed and executed concurrently. Virtual memory management is fully compatible with the ECLIPSE MV/Family eight-level ring hierarchy. Its multiuser security features are appropriate for many commercial business and scientific computation needs.

AOS/VS II is an enhanced version of the AOS/VS operating system and offers features such as a “fail-safe” file system, bad-block remapping, and software disk mirroring. These additional features provide an operating system platform for more reliable and highly available environments. AOS/VS II provides many important features for such environments including rapid recovery from system failures (no fix-up), automatic correction of many disk errors, and more flexible disk-mirroring. On the MV/60000 HA, AOS/VS II also provides for auto re-start after a failure if a minimum system configuration is still present.

The MV/60000 HA is supported by a broad range of industry-specific software solutions, available in more than 100 vertical markets including banking, brokerage, civil engineering, government, healthcare, law, discrete and process manufacturing, retail and wholesale distribution, and telecommunications. And in other markets, ongoing software recruitment will provide new application solutions for the MV/Family. These solutions are available from Data General, as well as over 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) and value-added resellers (VARs) worldwide.

Data General also offers a complete set of programming languages, development tools, utilities, and integrated, on- line information management software solutions and systems.

A wealth of word processing options, including CEO, CEOwrite, and CEO Object Office are also readily available to MV/Family users. CEO, Data General’s premier office automation software, is designed for environments requiring extensive office automation functionality. It features electronic mail, word processing, and administrative and decision support. CEO Object Office lets PC users take advantage of the integrated power of CEO and business applications. CEO Object Office efficiently integrates – on an icon-driven desktop – popular MS-DOS and Windows applications with basic CEO functionality.

Specifications

Job Processor:

CPU: Motorola MCA3 ECL gate arrays

Word Size: 32

Instruction Width: 64

Cycle Time: 25ns

System Bus Bandwidth: 600MB/sec.

Performance:

Specific Documentation

Gallery