NVIDIA Mellanox MCX653105A-HDAT SmartNIC Firmware 20.28.2006

Firmware which is added at the time of manufacturing, is used to run user programs on the device and can be thought of as the software that allows hardware to run. Embedded firmware is used to control the functions of various hardware devices and systems, much like a computer’s operating system (OS) controls the function of software applications. Firmware may be written into read-only memory (ROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) or flash memory.

Important Notes:
- Security Hardening Enhancements: This release contains important reliability improvements and security hardening enhancements. Mellanox recommends upgrading your devices firmware to this release to improve the devices’ firmware security and reliability.
- When upgrading or changing configuration on multi-host adapter cards, for the changes to take effect, PCIe restart must be simultaneously send from both hosts (servers).
- SR-IOV - Virtual Functions (VF) per Port - The maximum Virtual Functions (VF) per port is 127.

Changes and New Features:

- Increased the minimum Sub Function (SF) BAR size from 128KB to 256KB. Due to the larger SF BAR size, for the same PF BAR2 size, which can be queried/modified by LOG_PF_BAR2_SIZE NV config, the firmware will support half of the SFs. To maintain the same amount of supported SFs, software needs to increase the LOG_PF_BAR2_SIZE NV config value by 1.
- AES_XTS is used to perform all disk encryption/decryption related flows in the NIC and reduce cost and overheads of the related FIPS certification.
- Enabled a direct access to ATS from the NIC to GPU buffers using PCIe peer-to-peer transactions. To enable this capability, the “p2p_ordering_mode” parameter was added to the NV_PCI_CONF configuration.
- Added a new Non-Volatile Configuration parameter to control VL15 buffer size (VL15_BUFFER_SIZE).
- Added a new NC-SI command (get_device_id) to report a unique device identifier.
- Added new NC-SI commands (get_lldp_nb, set_lldp_nb) to query the current status of LLDP and to enable/disable it.
- Split the SlowRestart ROCE_ACCL into the following: slow-restart – used to reduce rate on retransmission events / slow-restart-after-idle – used to reduce rate before first transmission after >1s without transmitting
- Enabled TX PSN window size configuration using LOG_TX_PSN_WINDOW NVconfig parameter.

Bug Fixes:

- Updated the following Mellanox OEM NC-SI commands to fix an issue that caused the "Port swap" capability not to function properly: Get Temperature, get Module Serial Data, and set Module Serial Data
- Fixed and issue that resulted in driver startup failure when working in pass-through mode and dual port devices.

About Network Adapter Drivers:

When connected, the operating system usually installs a generic driver that helps the computer to recognize the newly attached device.

However, proper software must be applied if you want to make use of all features that the network adapter has available. This task also allows computers to properly recognize all device characteristics such as manufacturer, chipset, technology, and others.

Updating the adapter's drivers and utilities version might improve overall performance and stability, increase transfer speeds, fix different compatibility problems and several network-related errors, as well as bring various other changes.

To install this release, simply get the package, extract it if necessary, run the setup, and follow the instructions displayed on-screen. When done, don't forget to perform a system restart and reconnect the network adapter to make sure that all changes take effect properly.

Without further ado, if you intend to apply this version, click the download button and install the package. Moreover, check with our website as often as possible so that you don't miss a single new release.