Intel® 5000 Series Chipsets Server Board Family Datasheet System BIOS
Revision 1.1
Intel order number D38960-004
37
3.3.9.1 RAS Features
Server boards based on the Intel
®
5000 Series Chipsets support the following memory RAS
features:
Memory mirroring
Memory sparing
Automatic thermal throttling
Fully-buffered DIMM (FBD) Channel Intel
®
Interconnect BIST (Intel
®
IBIST)
These standard RAS modes are used in conjunction with the standard memory test and
memory scrub engines to provide full RAS support. Some of the RAS features are implemented
differently on some boards.
3.3.9.2 Memory Sparing
All versions of the Intel
®
5000 Series Chipset provide memory sparing capabilities. Sparing is a
RAS feature that involves configuring of a FBDIMM on the server board to be placed in reserve
so it can be use to replace an FBDIMM that fails.
Spared memory configurations do not provide redundant copies of memory and the system can
not continue to operate when an uncorrectable error occurs. The purpose of memory sparing is
to detect a failing FBDIMM before it causes a system crash. Once the affected FBDIMM is
isolated and removed from the set of active FBDIMMs, the system integrity is maintained by
copying the data from the failed FBDIMM to the reserved FBDIMM.
See Section
0 for BIOS Setup utility options to enable this feature. The BIOS Setup utility will
show if memory sparing is possible with the current memory configuration.
Note: The DIMM sparing feature requires that the spare FBDIMM be at least the size of the
largest primary FBDIMM in use. When sparing is enabled, the BIOS selects the spare
automatically during POST. No manual configuration of this feature is required beyond turning
on the feature in BIOS Setup. With sparing enabled, the total effective memory size will be
reduced by the size of the spare FBDIMM(s).
3.3.9.2.1 Dual-ranked DIMM Sparing
When a dual-ranked FBDIMM is used as a spare, the BIOS has the ability to independently
select a physical rank on that FBDIMM as the spare unit and utilize the other physical rank as a
normal unit. This selective sparing ensures maximization of available memory while still
providing RAS. However, populating differently-ranked FBDIMMs for sparing is not a good
practice and may yield unpredictable results.
3.3.9.3 Minimum FBDIMM Population for Sparing
For FBDIMM sparing, the minimum population is at least two FBDIMMs on the same channel on
any branch. Selecting sparing from BIOS Setup will cause the BIOS to attempt enabling the
feature on both branches to begin with, but actual configuration for a given branch will depend
upon the population of FBDIMMs on that branch.
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