Installation guide

FC0151102-00 D 1-1
Section 1
Introduction
NOTE: The following QLogic host adapter boards are collectively referred to as
the QLA2xxx board unless otherwise noted:
QLA2000 (32-bit PCI to Fibre Channel copper media)
QLA2000F (32-bit PCI to Fibre Channel optical media)
QLA2100 (64-bit PCI to Fibre Channel copper media)
QLA2100F (64-bit PCI to Fibre Channel optical media)
QLA2102F (64-bit PCI to dual channel optical media)
1.1
General Description
Thank you for selecting the QLA2xxx Fibre Channel (FC) board. The QLA2xxx
board is an intelligent, high-performance, DMA bus master host adapter designed
for high-end systems. The intelligence and performance are derived from the
ISP2xxx chips, making the QLA2xxx board a leading-edge host adapter. The
ISP2xxx combines a powerful RISC processor, a fibre protocol module (FPM) with
gigabit transceivers, and a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) local bus
interface in a single-chip solution. The QLA2xxx board supports all FC peripherals
that support private loop direct attach (PLDA) and fabric loop attach (FLA).
Installation of the QLA2xxx board is quick and easy.
1.2
What is Fibre Channel?
Fibre channel technology is outlined in the SCSI-3 Fibre Channel Protocol
(SCSI-FCP) standard. Fibre Channel is a high-speed data transport technology
used for mass storage and networking. It connects mainframes, super computers,
workstations, storage devices, and servers. Using a Fibre Channel arbitrated loop
(FC-AL), 126 devices can be supported, compared to 15 devices with Ultra SCSI.
Fibre Channel supports data transfer rates of 100 Mbytes/sec on copper and optical
interfaces, which is more than twice that of Ultra SCSI (40 Mbytes/sec). A copper
interface is used for short connections (less than 30 meters); a multimode optical
interface is used for intermediate distances (less than 500 meters).
With increased connectivity and performance, Fibre Channel is the technology
preferred and used by system designers.