NVIDIA 900-9D3B4-00CC-E DPU Firmware 32.38.1002

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:

- This new capability enables the user to control the programmability of congestion control based on DOCA including APIs, libraries, reference applications and advanced features such as high availability.
- Added support to the metadata reg_c 8-11 (packet fields) for matching and modifying the header, and Advanced Steering Operation (ASO) actions.
- Added support for PTP on 200G port link speed. PTP uses an algorithm and method for synchronizing clocks on various devices across packet-based networks to provide sub-microsecond accuracy. NVIDIA Spectrum supports PTP in both one-step and two-step modes and can serve either as a boundary or a transparent clock.
- Added support for forwarding INT packets to the user application for monitoring purposes by matching the BTH acknowledge request bit (bth_a).
- Added crypto support (GCM algorithm) via the Memory-to-Memory offload (MMO) engine.
- Implemented NVIDIA NC-SI OEM command query_strap_options (command 0x0, parameter 0x34).
- Added the ability to increase the tweak for every block by (1<<64) instead of by 1 in AES-XTS.
- Added support for a new value for coredump_type field in DPA_PROCESS_COREDUMP, [FIRST_ERROR_THREAD_DUMP (1).].

Implemented the following mlxconfig parameters related to the sideband interface enable/disable method:

- PCIE_IN_BAND_VDM_DISABLE: When TRUE, the management processor will disable PCIe in-band VDM (MCTP over PCIe) interface.
- PCIE_SMBUS_DISABLE: When TRUE, the management processor will disable SMBUS (embedded on the PCIe connector) interface.
- RBT_DISABLE: When TRUE, the management processor will disable RBT interface.
- PLDM_FW_UPDATE_DISABLE: When TRUE, PLDM FW update over PCIe and SMBUS are disabled.
- HM_RDE_DISABLE: When TRUE, RDE over PCIe and SMBUS are disabled.

Bug Fixes:

- Updated the firmware INI to enable MCTP over SMBUS and PCIe.
- Improved token calculation.
- Fixed a QoS host port rate limit shaper inaccuracy that occurred when the shaper was configured via the QSHR access register.
- Fixed a reburst issue.
- Improved the grated2hw token calculation.
- Disabling the Relaxed Ordered (RO) capability (relaxed_ordering_read_pci_enabled=0) using the vhca_resource_manager is currently not functional.

Known Issues:

- 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 DPC mechanism is currently not supported.
- 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.