Diagnosis Guide

POWER3 SMP Thin and Wide Node characteristics

The POWER3 SMP node is offered in either a thin or wide footprint. The POWER3 nodes have the same hardware monitor supervisor card types as the 332 MHz SMP Thin and Wide Nodes.

In order to provide an SMP in these more dense packages, the power and cooling design is more like that of earlier thin and wide uniprocessor nodes. N+1 power and cooling is not offered for these nodes.

The POWER3 SMP node has the following characteristics like the 332 MHz SMP node:

• RPA (RS/6000 Platform Architecture) architecture, formerly known as CHRP. Node firmware performs low-level tasks, allowing operating systems like AIX to be less hardware-dependent.

  To see the installed hardware of an RPA node, as discovered and recognized by the firmware, issue this AIX command:

  /usr/lib/boot/bin/dmpdt_chrp
  

• The RPA architecture dictates that there is no key switch on a POWER3 SMP node. In order for a node to be ready to produce a dump when the node is reset, the AIX command:

  sysdumpdev -K
  

  must be issued before a dump-on-demand condition arises.

  The -K (upper case K) flag is most likely the default for the node. The AIX command:

  sysdumpdev -k
  

  (lower case k) resets the setting.