Mellanox MCX512F-ACAT PCIe Card Firmware 16.24.1000

Changes and New Features:

- Layer 3 Encapsulation: Added support for an additional layer (Layer 3) of packet processing at the hypervisor level that enables adding and removing protocol headers (e.g., the MAC address is removed during encapsulation, and added during decapsulation) for the encapsulated traffic.
- QoS Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS): Enabled QoS ETS for systems with 64 VFs to better allocate bandwidth in the NIC.
- Time to Live (TTL) Modification: Enabled TTL modification for received packets.
- VF Mirroring: Mirrors the traffic from/to one VF to a dedicate admin VF for monitoring and traffic analysis. Note that in this process packets are duplicated and different packet modifications apply to different duplications.
- Transmission Histogram Counters: Added support for the transmission histogram counter set as part of the Ethernet extended group counters.
- Events Generation by the Hardware upon Counter Incrementation: Enabled the hardware to generate an event upon counter incrementation, in order to reduce an overhead from the software from reading rarely updated counters such as error counters.
- NODNIC Connectivity: Enables NOIDNIC connectivity to the network through the e-switch and not directly to the physical port.
- QP and Mkey Values: Enabled setting the QP and the Mkey values by the software upon these resources creation.
- PCIe Atomic: Enabled advanced PCIe atomic operations. The HCA will perform PCIe atomic operations as a requestor towards the host memory when receiving compatible atomic messages from the network, and according to the configuration of NV_SW_OFFLOAD_CONFIG pci_atomic_mode field and the PCI AtomicOp Requester Enable bit in the Device Control 2 register.
- TTL Modification for Rx NIC (Steering): Enabled TTL modification in the Rx NIC steering. When modifying the TTL in the Rx NIC, the CQE checksum will not recalculated automatically. Note: TTL modification in the FDB for traffic from the network is currently not supported.
- TIR Destination from the FDB: Enabled a single TIR destination from the FDB.
- WRED: Changed the WRED default mode to OFF for Multi-Host adapter cards.
- TX Steering Rule on in WQE Ethernet Segment: Added support for TX steering rule on flow_table_metadata in WQE Ethernet segment.
- L3 Encapsulation/Decapsulation in the Reformat Context Allocation: Added L3 encapsulation/decapsulation support in the reformat context allocation. L3 encapsulation removes L2 headers and adds generic L3 tunnel encapsulation. L3 decapsulation removes the generic L3 tunnel decapsulation and L2 header.
- Flow Steering Header Modification: Added support for flow steering header modification (header rewrite) for IPv4 TTL header for loopback traffic (VF-VF/VF-PF). Note: TTL modification for traffic from the network is currently not supported.
- Teardown: Fast Mode: [Developers only] Moved the fast teardown HCA cap bit to offset 0x1c.4:1.
- Virtual Functions/QoS: Enabled Virtual Functions to read QPDPM/QPDP/QPTS.
- Message vs. Payload based flow control QP Configuration: Added support for requester QP packet based on E2E credits mode. The new flow control supports HCA-to-switch RDMA traffic packet-based End-2-End.
- Multi PCI RDMA IB: This capability enables the user to expose two PCI/IB devices per network port.

Bug Fixes History:

- Fixed a PCIe bifurcation issue.
- Fixed a deadlock in RX related to the “send-invalidate” flow, that resulted in RX getting stuck.
- Fixed rare errors in RX that resulted in double completion.
- Fixed an issue that caused the mlxconfig tool to present all possible expansion ROM images, instead of presenting only the existing images.
- Modifying VMQoS rate limiter parameters during traffic might cause transmission failure.
- Aligned the default tuning type in PHY TEST MODE to the device protocol.
- When a device is operating in Safe Mode state, and the user issues the mlxfwreset command, the device might fail to come-up correctly after the reset. Note: Do not run mlxfwreset when operating in a Safe Mode state.
- Fixed an issue related to PCIe "Surprise link down" event reporting capability.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in the link partner experiencing false active linkup when plugging in a base-T cable to a closed port.
- Modifying VMQoS rate limiter parameters during traffic might cause transmission failure.

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.