Lenovo ThinkSystem NVIDIA ConnectX-8 8240 400Gbps QSFP112 2-Port PCIe Gen6 x16 Adapter

Product Overview

The ThinkSystem NVIDIA ConnectX-8 8240 400Gbps QSFP112 2-Port PCIe Gen6 x16 Adapter is a high-performance two-port SuperNIC network adapter featuring two QSFP112 interfaces. It supports either 400Gb NDR InfiniBand or 400 Gb Ethernet, providing high-speed connectivity for AI computing.

The ThinkSystem NVIDIA ConnectX-8 8240 400Gbps QSFP112 2-Port PCIe Gen6 x16 Adapter, shown with its full adapter gold case and internal heatsink removed, displays the circuit board with key components, including the NVIDIA chip, QSFP112 connectors, and various integrated circuits and connectors.

Did you know?

The ConnectX-8 8240 adapter includes support for NVIDIA In-Network Computing acceleration engines to deliver the performance and robust feature set needed to power trillion-parameter-scale AI factories and scientific computing workloads.

Part Number Information

Table 1. Ordering information

The option part number includes the following:

• One NVIDIA adapter with full-height (3U) adapter bracket attached
• Low-profile (2U) adapter bracket
• Documentation

In PCIe Gen5 systems, the ConnectX-8 8240 adapter requires the use of an Auxiliary cable which plugs into a second PCIe x16 connection. The combination of the x16 host interface of the adapter plus the x16 connection of the Auxiliary cable results in a PCIe 5.0 x32 connection, needed for 800 Gb networking connectivity. Ordering information for the Auxiliary cable is listed in the following table.

Table 2. Auxiliary cable for ConnectX-8 adapters

Supported transceivers and cables

The ConnectX-8 8240 adapter has two empty QSFP112 cages for connectivity. The following table lists the supported transceivers.

Table 3. Transceivers

The following table lists the supported optical cables.

Table 4. Optical cables

The following table lists the supported direct-attach copper (DAC) cables.

Table 5. Copper cables

Technical specifications

The adapter has the following technical specifications:

Implementation tip: By default, the ConnectX-8 C8240 adapter will attempt to establish a link using Ethernet. If an InfiniBand connection is required, the protocol must be changed on the adapter.

• Two QSFP112 cages
• InfiniBand Network Interface
  • Supports 200/100/50G PAM4
  • Speeds: 2 ports each of 400Gb, 200Gb, 100Gb
  • Supports InfiniBand NDR/HDR/HDR100/EDR
  • IBTA v1.7-compliant
  • 16 million I/O channels
  • 256 to 4,000 byte MTU, 2GB messages
• Ethernet Network Interface
  • Supports 100/50G PAM4 and 25/10G NRZ
  • Speeds: 2 ports each of 400Gb, 200Gb, 100Gb, 50Gb, 25Gb
  • Supports up to 8 split ports
  • Max bandwidth: 800Gb/s
• Protocol support
  • InfiniBand: IBTA v1.7; Auto-Negotiation: XDR (4 lanes x 200Gb/s per port), NDR (4 lanes x 100Gb/s per lane) port, NDR200 (2 lanes x 100Gb/s per lane) port, HDR (50Gb/s per lane) port, HDR100 (2 lane x 50Gb/s per lane) port, EDR (25Gb/s per lane) port, FDR (14.0625Gb/s per lane), 1X/2X/4X SDR (2.5Gb/s per lane).
  • Ethernet: 400GAUI-4 C2M, 400GBASE-CR4, 200GAUI-2 C2M, 200GAUI-4 C2M, 200GBASE-CR4, 100GAUI-2 C2M, 100GAUI-1 C2M, 100GBASE-CR4, 100GBASE-CR2, 100GBASE-CR1, 50GAUI-2 C2M, 50GAUI-1 C2M, 50GBASE-CR, 50GBASE-R2, 40GBASE-CR4, 40GBASE-R2, 25GBASE-R, 10GBASE-R, 10GBASE-CX4, 1000BASE-CX, CAUI-4 C2M, 25GAUI C2M, XLAUI C2M, XLPPI, SFI
• Host Interface
  • PCIe Gen6 x16 host interface via edge connector
  • Additional x16 interface via an MCIO connector on the adapter (requires Auxiliary cable)
  • NVIDIA Multi-Host (up to 4 hosts)
  • MSI/MSI-X
• Optimized Cloud Networking
  • Stateless TCP offloads: IP / TCP / UDP checksum, LSO, LRO, GRO, TSS, RSS
  • SR-IOV
  • Ethernet Accelerated Switching & Packet Processing (ASAP2) for SDN and VNF
  • OVS acceleration
  • Overlay network accelerations: VXLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE
  • Connection tracking (L4 firewall) and NAT
  • Hierarchical QoS, Header rewrite, Flow mirroring, Flow-based statistics, Flow aging
• Advanced AI / HPC Networking
  • RDMA and RoCEv2 accelerations
  • Advanced, programmable congestion control
  • NVIDIA GPUDirect RDMA
  • GPUDirect Storage
  • In-network computing
  • High-speed packet reordering
• MPI Accelerations
  • Burst-buffer offloads
  • Collective operations offloads
  • Rendezvous protocol offloads
  • Enhanced atomic operations
• AI / HPC Software
  • NCCL HPC-X
  • DOCA UCC / UCX
  • OpenMPI
  • MVAPICH-2
• Platform security
  • Secure boot with hardware root of trust (RoT)
  • Secure firmware update
  • Flash encryption
  • Device attestation (SPDM 1.2)
• Cryptography
  • Inline crypto accelerations: IPsec, TLS, MACsec, PSP
• Management and Control
  • Network Control Sideband Interface (NC-SI)
  • MCTP over SMBus and PCIe PLDM for:
    • Monitor and Control DSP0248
    • Firmware Update DSP0267
    • Redfish Device Enablement DSP0218
    • Field-Replaceable Unit (FRU) DSP0257
  • Security Protocols and Data Models (SPDM) DSP0274
  • Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) to flash
  • Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) IEEE 1149.1 and IEEE 1149.6
• Network Boot
  • InfiniBand or Ethernet
  • PXE boot
  • iSCSI boot
  • UEFI

NVIDIA Unified Fabric Manager (UFM)

NVIDIA Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) is InfiniBand networking management software that combines enhanced, real-time network telemetry with fabric visibility and control to support scale-out InfiniBand data centers.

The two offerings available from Lenovo are as follows:

• UFM Telemetry for Real-Time Monitoring
  The UFM Telemetry platform provides network validation tools to monitor network performance and conditions, capturing and streaming rich real-time network telemetry information, application workload usage, and system configuration to an on-premises or cloud-based database for further analysis.
• UFM Enterprise for Fabric Visibility and Control
  The UFM Enterprise platform combines the benefits of UFM Telemetry with enhanced network monitoring and management. It performs automated network discovery and provisioning, traffic monitoring, and congestion discovery. It also enables job schedule provisioning and integrates with industry-leading job schedulers and cloud and cluster managers, including Slurm and Platform Load Sharing Facility (LSF).

The following table lists the subscription licenses available from Lenovo.

Table 6. NVIDIA Unified Fabric Manager subscriptions

For more information, see the following web page: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/networking/infiniband/ufm/

Server support

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

Table 7. Server support (Part 1 of 4)

Table 8. Server support (Part 2 of 4)

Table 9. Server support (Part 3 of 4)

Table 10. Server support (Part 4 of 4)

Support of adapters with generic firmware

One or more of the adapters described in this product guide uses standard vendor firmware (look for "Generic FW" or "Generic" in the adapter names). These adapters are supported in Lenovo servers however there are currently limitations on the use of Lenovo management tools.

Tip: Always use firmware that is obtained from Lenovo sources to ensure the firmware is fully tested by Lenovo and is supported. You should not use firmware that is obtained from the vendor web site, unless directed to do so by Lenovo support.

Table 11. Lenovo XClarity management tools support for adapters with generic firmware

Regulatory Approvals

The adapter has the following regulatory approvals:

• Safety: CB / cTUVus / CE
• EMC: CE / FCC / VCCI / ICES / RCM / KC
• RoHS: RoHS Compliant

Operating environment

The adapter has the following operating characteristics:

• Maximum power available through OSFP port: 17W
• Temperature
  • Operational: 0°C to 55°C
  • Non-operational: -40°C to 70°C
• Humidity: 90% relative humidity

Warranty

One year limited warranty. When installed in a Lenovo server, the adapter assumes the server's base warranty and any warranty upgrades.

Related publications

For more information, refer to these documents:

• ThinkSystem Ethernet and InfiniBand Adapter Reference: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1594-thinksystem-ethernet-infiniband-adapter-reference
• Lenovo ServerProven compatibility information: http://serverproven.lenovo.com
• NVIDIA InfiniBand product page: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/networking/infiniband-adapters/
• ConnectX-8 SuperNIC user manual: https://docs.nvidia.com/networking/display/connectx8supernic

Related product families

Product families related to this document are the following:

• InfiniBand & Omni-Path Adapters

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This document, LP2164, was created or updated on February 25, 2025.

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