Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP) is a

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

Distributed Management Task Force Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...

(DMTF) to support communications between different intelligent hardware components that make up a platform management subsystem, providing monitoring and control functions inside a managed computer system. This protocol is independent of the underlying physical

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

properties, as well as the

data link layer The data link layer, or layer 2, is the second layer of the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking. This layer is the protocol layer that transfers data between nodes on a network segment across the physical layer. The data link layer p ...

messaging used on the bus. The MCTP communication model includes a message format, transport description, message exchange patterns, and operational

endpoint An endpoint, end-point or end point may refer to: * Endpoint (band), a hardcore punk band from Louisville, Kentucky * Endpoint (chemistry), the conclusion of a chemical reaction, particularly for titration * Outcome measure, a measure used as an e ...

characteristics. MCTP's underlying buses include

SMBus The System Management Bus (abbreviated to SMBus or SMB) is a single-ended simple two-wire bus for the purpose of lightweight communication. Most commonly it is found in computer motherboards for communication with the power source for ON/OFF instru ...

/ I²C, serial links,

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

and

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

. Simplified nature of the protocol and reduced encapsulation overheads make MCTP suitable for implementation and processing within system firmware and integrated

baseboard management controller The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system's CPU, firmware (BIOS or ...

s (BMCs), on a wide range of platforms including servers, workstations and embedded devices. For example,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

network interface controller A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Ear ...

s (NICs) include support for MCTP over PCI Express and SMBus since 2012, allowing these NICs to be controlled and monitored at a low level over MCTP. Exposed configuration and monitoring operations include power management, control of

Address Resolution Protocol The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a communication protocol used for discovering the link layer address, such as a MAC address, associated with a given internet layer address, typically an IPv4 address. This mapping is a critical function ...

(ARP) offloading, configuration of the

out-of-band management In systems management, out-of-band management involves the use of management interfaces (or serial ports) for managing networking equipment. Out-of-band (''OOB'') management is a networking term which refers to accessing and managing network infras ...

traffic (which can be separated from the Ethernet traffic visible to the operating system by using

RMCP The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system's CPU, firmware (BIOS or U ...

ports filtering, a separate

MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking techno ...

, or through

VLAN A virtual local area network (VLAN) is any broadcast domain that is partitioned and isolated in a computer network at the data link layer (OSI layer 2).IEEE 802.1Q-2011, ''1.4 VLAN aims and benefits'' In this context, virtual, refers to a physi ...

tagging), and handling of NIC's interrupts and error conditions. DMTF also defines the Management Controller Host Interface (MCHI), which includes a set of discovery options and registration commands, allowing

UEFI UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of ...

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...

or the operating system to communicate with a MCTP-enabled BMC. Discovery options include PCI/PCI Express class codes as part of the

PCI configuration space PCI configuration space is the underlying way that the Conventional PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express perform auto configuration of the cards inserted into their bus. Overview PCI devices have a set of registers referred to as ''configuration space ...

, MCHI Description Table and control methods defined and exported via

ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto c ...

, and data structures exported via

SMBIOS In computing, the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) specification defines data structures (and access methods) that can be used to read management information produced by the BIOS of a computer. This eliminates the need for the operating system to ...

References

External links

Platform Management Components Intercommunication (PMCI)
a set of standards defined by the Distributed Management Task Force Computer hardware standards DMTF standards Out-of-band management {{Comp-hardware-stub

See also

References

External links