Processor And Secondary Cache; System Bios - NEC PowerMate Enterprise Manual

1-10 Technical Information

Processor and Secondary Cache

The system uses an Intel Pentium II processor with an internal clock speed of 233 MHz,
266 MHz or 300 MHz. Each processor uses Intel MMX technology.
The processor is an advanced pipelined 32-bit addressing, 64-bit data processor designed to
optimize multitasking operating systems. The 64-bit registers and data paths support 64-bit
addresses and data types.
To use the Pentium processor's power, the system features an optimized 64-bit memory
interface and 512 KB of secondary write-back cache on the processor.
The processor is compatible with 8-, 16-, and 32-bit software written for the Intel386™,
Intel486™, Pentium, and Pentium Pro processors. The Pentium II processor is mounted on
a CPU card with an attaching heatsink that installs as unit (CPU subsystem) in Slot 1 on the
system board.

System BIOS

The system BIOS is from Intel, based on Phoenix Technologies Limited (PTL) Release 6.0.
This ISA- and PCI-compatible BIOS is contained in a flash memory device on the system
board. The BIOS provides the Power-On Self-Test (POST), the system Setup program, a
PCI and IDE auto-configuration utility, and BIOS recovery code.
The system BIOS is always shadowed. Shadowing allows any BIOS routine to be executed
from fast 32-bit DRAM on the system board, instead of from the slower 8-bit flash device.
NEC's Flash ROM allows fast, economical BIOS upgrades. The Flash ROM is a
reprogrammable EPROM containing both the system and video BIOS. Using the Flash
ROM to change the ROM BIOS provides the following advantages:
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the BIOS upgrade is performed quickly and easily
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the expense of replacing ROM BIOS chips is eliminated, so system maintenance
costs are reduced
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there is less chance of inadvertently damaging the system board than when
physically replacing ROMs
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new technology can be incorporated while maintaining corporate standards
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network administrators can exercise company-wide control of BIOS revisions.
The BIOS programs execute the Power-On Self-Test, initialize processor controllers, and
interact with the display, diskette drives, hard disk drives, communication devices, and
peripherals. The system BIOS also contains the Setup utility. The POST copies the ROM
BIOS into RAM (shadowing) for maximum performance.