NVIDIA 699-21014-0230 DPU Firmware 32.39.2048

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.

NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU provides innovative acceleration, security, and efficiency in every host. BlueField-3 data center infrastructure combines the power of the NVIDIA ConnectX-6 Dx with programmable Arm cores and hardware offloads for software-defined storage, networking, security, and management workloads.

NVIDIA BlueField-3 also delivers superior performance, security, and reduced TCO for cloud computing platforms, enabling organizations to efficiently build and operate virtualized, containerized, and bare-metal infrastructures at massive scale.

Changes:

- Changed the default FEC configuration for the "Protocol Aware" and "Active DME Modules" (ETH cables). For the list of cable identifiers, see tables below.
- Added support for two passthrough channels on dual-port adapter cards.
- Added a caching mechanism to improved expansion ROM performance and to avoid any slow boot occurrences when loading the expansion ROM driver.
- Added support for image size above 4GB when performing a live migration by splitting the image to chunks.
- Extended the role-based authentication to cover all crypto algorithms. Now the TLS. IPsec. MACsec. GCM, mem2mem, and NISP work when nv_crypto_conf.crypto_policy = CRYPTO_POLICY_FIPS_LEVEL_2, meaning all cryptographic engines can also work in wrapped mode and not only in plaintext mode.
- Added the ability to configure the DSCP (priority) of ACK packets using the ROCE_ACCL access register.
- Added support for large MTU for force loopback QPs to improve performance (using the aes_xts_tweak_inc_64 parameter). This capability is enabled by mlxconfig LARGE_MTU_TWEAK_64 parameter.
- When there is DDR poison (uncorrectable ECC error), firmware reports the health syndrome ICM_FETCH_PCI_DATA_POISONED_ERR (0x14), and triggers the FLR on the the function causing this error. Due to this error, the DDR data is mostly corrupted therefore, the firmware blocks other operations on this function.
- Added support for Live Firmware Patch.
- Added new support for reserved mkey index range. When enabled, a range of mkey indexes is reserved for mkey by name use.
- Added support for admin queue in virtio device object.
- Enabled GGA modules for all working modes (except for RXP) when using Enhanced NIC Mode.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed an issue on special systems with separate power supply that caused the host to hang and RDMA to fail in virtio-net-controller when performing the following steps: hotplug 31 vnet device, host power off, unplug 31 vnet device, hotplug 31 vnet device, or host power on
- BlueField Arm cores that serve as PCIe Root-Port of PCIe End-Point devices (eg NVMe SSDs) connected to BlueField’s PCIe interfaces may receive MSI-X (used by a device to indicate an event) prior to PCIe CQE writes, resulting in a driver interrupt handler trying to retrieve data in an inconsistent state.
- Fixed the cr_space in port configuration to prevent wrong timestamp of cqes.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the PCC flow context database from being cleared when starting a new DOCA PCC application used to avoid the "left state by legacy" active application from impacting the new application's behavior.
- Updated the HW ETS (QETCR RL) default to be per host-port instead of per physical-port to prevent bandwidth degradation.
- Fixed an issue that caused the TX to hang and create a "TX timeout" error in dmesg after unplugging the device forcefully during server warm reboot.
- Fixed the issue that caused the server not to boot up (after power cycle) when there are 31 hotplug devices on a customized server with BlueField-3 DPU with an independent power supply.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in reset failure when unloading network drivers on an external host and the sync1 reset is still reported as 'supported' although it is not.
- Extended the number of elastic buffer lock attempts, to prevent rare cases of Tx issues during Gen1.
- Fixed an issue when in LAG mode that resulted in RoCE traffic having less throughput when Congestion Control (CC) mode is enabled than when CC mode is disabled.
- Added support for hairpin drop counter in QUERY_VNIC_ENV command.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in migration data corruption when running parallel save_vhca_state/load_vhca_state commands on the same PF.
- Updated OOB counter behavior.
- The DPC mechanism is currently not supported.

Known Issues:

- The supported DDR5 link speed is 5200 MT/s.
- Occasionally, the device may hang when there a hot plug is performed from a unknown direction.
- Some pre-OS environments may fail when sensing a hot-plug operation during their boot stage.
- The I2C clock fall time is lower than the 12ns minimum defined in the I2C-bus specification.
- When connecting to a High Speed Traffic Generator in 400G speed, the linkup time may takes up to 3 minutes.
- External flash access such as flash read using the MFT tools will fail if there is a pending image on the flash.
- On BlueField-3 devices, from DOCA 2.2.0 to 32.37.1306 (or lower), the host crashes when executing partial Arm reset (e.g., Arm reboot; BFB push; mlxfwreset).
- When unloading the network drivers on an external host, sync1 reset may be still reported as 'supported' although it is not. Thus, initiating the reset flow may result in reset failure after a few minutes.
- When connecting to a Spirent switch in 400G speed, the linkup time may takes up to 3 minutes.
- PCIe PML1 is disabled.
- Unexpected system behavior might be observed if the driver is loaded while reset is in progress.
- When performing PCIe link secondary-bus-reset, disable/enable or mlxfwreset on AMD based Genoa systems, the device takes longer then expected to link up, due to a PCIe receiver termination misconfiguration.
- The firmware rollback fails for the signature retransmit flow if the QPN field is configured in the mkey (as it only allows the given QP to use this Mkey) as the firmware rollback flow relies on an internal QP that uses the mkey.
- Socket-Direct is currently not supported.

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.