How to deploy NMC cards with best throughput performance on FWA-4130?

Scenario Description:

This note is introducing how to deploy the following NMC modules on FWA-4130 (8 NMC slots SKU) with the best throughput performance:

NMC-1009 (2 Ports 10GbE SFP+, PCIe x8)

NMC-4005 (4 Ports 10GbE SFP+, PCIe x8)

NMC-4009 (4 Ports 10GbE RJ45, 2 * PCIe x4)

NMC-0107 (4 Ports 1GbE RJ45, PCIe x4)

NMC-0807/0808/0809 (8 Ports 1GbE, PCIe x4) 

Recommended Configuration:

1. NMC1 and NMC2 both support PCIe x8: It is recommended to deploy either NMC-4005 or NMC-4007 or NMC-4009. 

2. NMC3 and NMC4 both support PCIe x4: It is recommended to deploy either NMC-1009 or NMC-0807/0808/0809.

• For other NMC cards with 8 Ethernet ports, like NMC-0803/0804/0805/0806 are unsupported to deploy at both slots, because each slot provides one PCIe lane but it requires more than one.  In contrast, NMC-0807/0808/0809 are designed with a PCIe switch to splitting one PCIe lane to multiple.
   

3. NMC5~8 share the bandwidth of PCIe SLOT1 (PCIe x4) : It is recommended to deploy 4 * NMC-0107 with max 4 x 1GbE ports.

Implication:

The bandwidth between NMC slots and cards are key point of this deployment. Refer to the FWA-4130 block diagram, slots are with different bandwidth in maximum. 

> NMC1 and NMC2 are from CPU, each slot supports 64 Gbps.

> NMC3 & NMC4 are from PCH, each slot supports 32 Gbps.

> NMC5~8 are from PCH, all of slots sharing 32 Gbps.

Except to inspect the hardware, it also determines BIOS setting. BIOS is able to fix PCIe speed at gen1, gen2, gen3 and auto mode, gen3 is by our default. By different applications, configuration are variable, in this note, deployment are based on PCIe3.0 (gen3).

It is flexible to deploy with different model of NMC cards, this note is just a reference aim to bring out tips of system deployment.  If you like or having other  thoughts, kindly leave your comments down below this post.