NEC Intel Xeon E5-2430 N8101-572F User Manual

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Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600/E5-2600/E5-4600 Product Families

Datasheet Volume One

The temperature reported over PECI is always a negative value and represents a delta 

below the onset of thermal control circuit (TCC) activation, as indicated by PROCHOT_N 
(see 

). Systems that implement fan speed control 

must be designed to use this data. Systems that do not alter the fan speed need to 

guarantee the case temperature meets the thermal profile specifications.

Some processor SKUs support two thermal profiles; refer to 

for a summary of 

the planned SKUs and their supported thermal profiles. Both ensure adherence to Intel 
reliability requirements. Thermal Profile 2U is representative of a volumetrically 

unconstrained thermal solution (that is, industry enabled 2U heatsink). With single 

thermal profile, it is expected that the Thermal Control Circuit (TCC) would be activated 
for very brief periods of time when running the most power intensive applications. 

Thermal Profile 1U is indicative of a constrained thermal environment (that is, 1U form 

factor). Because of the reduced cooling capability represented by this thermal solution, 
the probability of TCC activation and performance loss is increased. Additionally, 

utilization of a thermal solution that does not meet Thermal Profile 1U will violate the 

thermal specifications and may result in permanent damage to the processor. Refer to 
the Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600/E5-2600/E5-4600 Product Families Thermal/
Mechanical Design Guide

 for details on system thermal solution design, thermal profiles 

and environmental considerations. The upper point of the thermal profile consists of the 
Thermal Design Power (TDP) and the associated T

CASE

 value. It should be noted that 

the upper point associated with Thermal Profile 1U.

(x = TDP and y = T

CASE_MAX_B

 @ TDP) represents a thermal solution design point. In 

actuality the processor case temperature will not reach this value due to TCC 

activation.

For Embedded Servers, Communications and storage markets Intel has plan SKU’s that 
support Thermal Profiles with nominal and short-term conditions designed to meet 

NEBS level 3 compliance. For these SKU’s operation at either the nominal or short-term 

thermal profiles should result in virtually no TCC activation. Thermal Profiles for these 
SKU’s are found in 

Intel recommends that complete thermal solution designs target the Thermal Design 

Power (TDP). The Adaptive Thermal Monitor feature is intended to help protect the 
processor in the event that an application exceeds the TDP recommendation for a 

sustained time period. To ensure maximum flexibility for future requirements, systems 

should be designed to the Flexible Motherboard (FMB) guidelines, even if a processor 
with lower power dissipation is currently planned. The Adaptive Thermal Monitor 

To simplify compliance to thermal specifications at processor run time, the processor 
has added a Digital Thermal Sensor (DTS) based thermal specification. Digital Thermal 

Sensor reports a relative die temperature as an offset from TCC activation 

temperature. T

CASE

 thermal based specifications are used for heat sink sizing and DTS 

based specs are used for acoustic and fan speed optimizations. For the processor 

family, firmware (for example, BMC or other platform management devices) will have 

DTS based specifications for all SKUs programmed by the customer. 8-core and 6-core 
SKUs may share T

CASE

 thermal profiles but they will have separate T

DTS

 based thermal 

profiles. See 

 for the T

CASE

 and DTS SKU summary.

The processor fan speed control is managed by comparing DTS thermal readings via 

PECI against the processor-specific fan speed control reference point, or Tcontrol. Both 

Tcontrol and DTS thermal readings are accessible via the processor PECI client. At a 
one time readout only, the Fan Speed Control firmware will read the following: