NVIDIA MBF2H536C-CESO DPU Firmware 24.35.1012

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-2 DPU provides innovative acceleration, security, and efficiency in every host. BlueField-2 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-2 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 and New Features:

- HPCC related configurations in is now supported via the mlxconfig utility.
- Added support for copy modify header steering action to/from the UDP field.
- Added the following resource dump segments: SEG_HW_STE_FULL that includes dump to STE and all its dependencies.
- Added the following resource dump segments: SEG_FW_STE_FULL that include dump to FW_STE and to HW_STE_FULL in range
- As the software requires additional space before and after a packet is scattered for its processing for stridden RQ, the hardware will allocate the required room while scattering packets to spare a copy. 
- Improved security offload's Connections per Second (CPS) rate using the general object DEK (PSP TLS etc).
- Increased the VirtIO hardware offload message rate to 20/20 MPPS for 256 virtual devices by optimizing the datapath application code.
- Open SNAPI steering hop optimization: Only packets with dmac/dlid 0 will enter the SNAPI steering channel. Meaning if the Open SNAPI communication channel exists, all other traffic will have only 1 steering hop penalty
- Open SNAPI steering hop optimization: SW must use dlid/dmac == 0 in address vector of a SNAPI QP
- Open SNAPI steering hop optimization: cross eSwitch, Open SNAPI is now allowed if LAG is enabled
- Added support for SHA calculations via the MMO engine.
- Optimized latency for UPT traffic.
- Added LAG support on NODNIC interfaces to enable traffic functionality on other ports after the LAG is enabled.
- QoS priority trust default state can now be changed using the new nvconfig: QOS_TRUST_STATE_P1 or QOS_TRUST_STATE_P2. The values that can be used to set the default state are: TRUST_PORT, TRUST_PCP, TRUST_DSCP, TRUST_DSCP_PCP
- Implemented a transitional device which supports both drivers conforming to the spec 1.x and allows legacy drivers to support virtio legacy driver (virtio 0.95).

Bug Fixes:

 
- Fixed an issue that caused RDE (Redfish) PATCH operation to LLDPTransmit properties "ManagementAddressIPv4", "ManagementAddressIPv6" and "ManagementAddressMAC" to be applied only in the first attempt but failed in the next.
- Fixed an issue that caused the commands sent by the MLNX_OFED driver to the NIC to fail when loading the VirtIO driver. 
- In either the strongSwann or OVS IPsec solution, BlueField support for IPSec acceleration of host datapath (i.e., transparent IPSec full offload) stops passing host packets through the IPSec session beyond approximately 6.2*10e9 packets at 1500 Bytes MTU of Rx or Tx, regardless of whether the ESN flag used.
- Added Sync reset support in case the RShim PF is exposed but the RShim PCIe driver is not attached.
- Fixed PCI gateway configuration for Bluefield-2 to enable MCTP/PCI.
- Fixed an issue that caused PLDM AEN event receiver media to be changed unexpectedly and destination BDF to be overridden with garbage when some PLDM packet were received from the SMBus layer.
- Modified the compression GGA behavior to prevent moving a QP to the "error" state when the compressed size is larger than the destination buffer.
- CPU handling synchronization requires separation (run ptp4l with taskset -c [cpu #] prefix) while running heavy traffic.

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.