Lenovo / IBM NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-4 CX456A Dual-Port QSFP28 100GbE EDR InfiniBand VPI PCIe 3.0 x16 Network Interface Card (NIC) 00MM963

The Lenovo / IBM NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-4 CX456A (00MM963) is a high-performance enterprise network adapter designed for modern data centers, cloud computing, software-defined storage, virtualization, AI infrastructure, and high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Based on the Mellanox ConnectX-4 architecture and OEM model MCX456A-ECAT, this adapter delivers ultra-low latency, hardware offloads, and up to 100Gb/s connectivity through either Ethernet or InfiniBand networks using advanced Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technology.

Featuring dual QSFP28 ports and a PCI Express 3.0 x16 interface, the ConnectX-4 adapter provides exceptional network throughput while reducing CPU overhead through hardware acceleration technologies including RDMA, RoCE, SR-IOV, VXLAN, NVGRE, DPDK, Core-Direct, and GPUDirect.

Technical Specifications

General Information

• Manufacturer: Lenovo / IBM (OEM NVIDIA Mellanox)
• Lenovo Part Number: 00MM963
• Alternate Part Numbers: 00MM962Y, 00MM960
• Mellanox Model: CX456A
• OEM Model: MCX456A-ECAT
• Controller: Mellanox ConnectX-4 (MT27700 Family)
• Device Type: Network Interface Card (NIC)
• Form Factor: Low Profile PCIe Adapter
• Cooling: Passive Heatsink Design
• Bracket: Full Height Installed (Low Profile Compatible)

Host Interface

• PCI Express 3.0 x16
• Backward Compatible with PCIe 2.0
• Supports Installation in x8 Slots (Bandwidth Limited)
• Half-Height, Half-Length Design
• Approximate Dimensions: 68.9 mm x 142.24 mm

Port Configuration

• Dual-Port Adapter
• 2 × QSFP28 Ports
• Support for DAC, AOC, and Optical Transceivers
• Supports Breakout Configurations for 25GbE Deployments

Network Performance

Ethernet Support

• 100GbE
• 50GbE
• 40GbE
• 25GbE
• 10GbE
• 1GbE

InfiniBand Support

• EDR 100Gb/s
• FDR
• FDR10
• QDR
• DDR
• SDR

Protocol Support

• VPI (Virtual Protocol Interconnect)
• Ethernet
• InfiniBand
• RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE v1 & v2)
• Native InfiniBand RDMA
• IBTA Compliant Architecture

Advanced Features

• RDMA Acceleration
• RoCE v1/v2 Support
• SR-IOV with up to 256 Virtual Functions
• VXLAN Offloading
• NVGRE Offloading
• Geneve Tunnel Offloading
• GPUDirect Support
• DPDK Compatibility
• Core-Direct Technology
• Receive Side Scaling (RSS)
• Jumbo Frames up to 9600 Bytes
• Large Send Offload (LSO)
• MSI-X Interrupt Support
• Link Aggregation
• Secure PXE Boot
• iSCSI Boot Support

Compatible Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016
• Microsoft Windows Server 2019
• Microsoft Windows Server 2022
• Windows 10
• Windows 11
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
• CentOS
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)
• VMware ESXi 6.7
• VMware ESXi 7.0
• VMware ESXi 8.0
• OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) Drivers

Compatible Servers

Lenovo ThinkSystem

• SR630
• SR650
• SR850
• SR860
• SR950
• ST550
• SD530

IBM / Lenovo System x

• x3550 M5
• x3650 M5
• x3850 X6
• x3950 X6

Additional Platforms

• Dell PowerEdge Servers
• HPE ProLiant Servers
• Supermicro Servers
• Any system with a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and adequate airflow for passive cooling

Compatible Optics & Cables

QSFP28 Optical Modules

• 100GBASE-SR4 QSFP28
• 100GBASE-LR4 QSFP28
• NVIDIA Mellanox MMA1B00-C100D
• NVIDIA Mellanox MMA1B00-C100

Cable Support

• QSFP28 Passive DAC Cables
• QSFP28 Active Optical Cables (AOC)
• QSFP28 to QSFP28 Copper Cables
• QSFP28 to 4x SFP28 Breakout Cables
• Multi-Mode Fiber (MMF)
• Single-Mode Fiber (SMF) 

Compatible Switches

InfiniBand

• NVIDIA Mellanox Quantum Series
• Mellanox Switch-IB Series
• SB7700
• SB7800

Ethernet

• NVIDIA Mellanox Spectrum Series
• SN2700
• SN3700
• Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
• Arista 7060 Series
• Lenovo ThinkSystem NE10032
• Open 100GbE Data Center Switches

Ideal For

• Enterprise Data Centers
• High-Performance Computing (HPC)
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Machine Learning Clusters
• Virtualization Environments
• Cloud Infrastructure
• Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)
• Software-Defined Storage (SDS)
• Big Data Analytics
• Financial Computing
• Research Networks
• 100G Ethernet Deployments
• InfiniBand Fabric Networks