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National's 'Mini' BMC Cuts Remote Server Management Costs

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(07/23/02, 12:12:56 AM EDT)

Santa Clara, Ca. --- A new mini baseboard management controller (mBMC) from National Semiconductor Corp. has been designed to give to users of slow- and medium-end servers the capability for the kind of remote management that is usually only found in high-end servers because of high cost.

The new PC87431 single chip mBMC is the first of several remote management controllers National is developing to support version 1.5 of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification.

IPMI, Intelligent Platform Management Interface, is an open standard hardware manageability interface specification. It defines common abstracted, message-based interfaces to intelligent platform management hardware.

The National device consists of a processor, internal sensors, flash and preprogrammed firmware to monitor a server's baseboard power supply and SCSI termination voltages, other system voltages, temperature sensors and fan failure indicators to provide remote manageability.

The mBMC resides on the motherboard and combines into a single chip, remote manageability, remote alerting and remote BIOS checking/switching functionality as defined by the IPMI specification. It includes preprogrammed IPMI firmware and features secure remote chassis control, system health monitoring (using internal and external voltage and temperature sensors) and alerting, autonomous corrective actions on critical sensor events, LAN alerts on critical events and remote access to fault status.

Samples of National's PC87431 mBMC are available now. Production quantities will be available in early July. The PC87431 is available in a 44-pin PLCC package and also in 44-pin LLP and 48-pin TSSOP packages for applications with space constraints. In 1,000 unit quantities, the PLCC costs $8.60, the LLP costs $8.50 and the TSSOP costs $8.55. Evaluation boards are also available.

For more information on the mBMC, go to www.national.com/appinfo/advancedio.

For more information, go to http://developer.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi.