EPS12V Power and ECC Registered Memory
To power the Tyan Thunder i7501 Xtreme, and all the
connected hardware that goes with it, you'll need to use a special 24pin EPS12V
power supply. This board will not work with "regular" 24-pin ATX power supplies
unless they are specifically EPS12V compatible. Of course don't forget to connect
the 8-pin ESP12V connector.
  The layout of the Thunder i7501 Xtreme is
optimized for 1U - 3U rack mount servers where much of the airflow used to
cool processors, or components, is derived from case mounted fans. The twin
Xeon sockets are located towards the front of the case, meaning the processors will
be cooled with colder intake air than if they were located behind the memory for
example.
32-bit Memory Limit:
Servers require a lot of memory to dish out a
steady flow of data for the millions of requests it may receive in a production
environment, say acting as web or database server.
If the server is starved for
memory it may function unreliably, and for this reason the Tyan Thunder i7501
Xtreme supports up to 12GB of Registered ECC PC1600/2100 DDR.
But wait a second, how can the Tyan Thunder i7501 Xtreme use 12GB of memory
if 32-bit processors can only address 4 GB of memory (2^32)? The answer to that
one is easy; it's able to increase its addressable memory size via software, in
almost the exact same manner 16-bit processors broke the 1 MB and 16 MB
addressing limit.
Working away on our desktops,
we're all familiar that WindowsXP can only access 4GB of RAM. Server's
are more specialized in their application, and server-oriented operating
systems can handle a lot more RAM. For example, Windows 2000 Advanced Server can
support 8 GB of RAM, where as Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
can access 32 GB of memory.... and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition can
access a budget-busting 64 GB of RAM thanks to PAE (Physical Address
Extension).
That is a lot of memory, but as it stands that's the
absolute limit of x86-32 hardware. Of course PAE is not the most efficient process
in the world, and it does have limitations, but that is beyond the scope of this
review.
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