NVIDIA MCX621102AC-ADAT SmartNIC Firmware 22.37.1014

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:
- SR-IOV - Virtual Functions (VF) per Port - The maximum Virtual Functions (VF) per port is 127.
- It is recommended to enable the “above 4G decoding” BIOS setting for features that require large amount of PCIe resources. Such features are: SR-IOV with numerous VFs, PCIe Emulated Switch, and Large BAR Requests.
- Security Hardening Enhancements: This release contains important reliability improvements and security hardening enhancements. NVIDIA recommends upgrading your devices' firmware to this release to improve the devices’ firmware security and reliability.

Changes and New Features:

- Added mergeable buffer support (VIRTIO_NET_F_MRG_RXBUF in virtio spec) for VDPA kernel mode to improve performance in case of large MTU such as 9K. The feature is disabled by default and must be manually enabled while creating or modifying the virtio device. Note: For best performance, it is NOT recommended to enable the feature if the VDPA MTU is set to the default value (1500).
- This new capability enables the VM to track and limit its Vport's activity. This is done using the new q_counters counter which enables aggregation of other Vport's from PF GVMI.
- Added a flow rule that enables offloading of multicast traffic by broadcasting it to multi-Flow-Table in FDB.
- Enables a smooth and statically switch between PCC algorithms. In addition, the user can now switch between PCC algorithms while running traffic.
- Added support for 32 actions in the header modify pattern using bulk allocation.
- The software can explicitly set the SL of an RTT response packet, instead of it being taken from the RTT request packet's SL. The RTT response packet SL may be set/queried via the CONGESTION_CONTROL_HCA_NP_PARAMETER MAD.

Added support for running PCC firmware trace without saving and sending the DB strings to the tool with the following changes:
- Added new string section to the user PCC image creation tool
- Added the new PCC DB strings to MTRC access registers output
- On the tool's part: added support to reading the string.db using the MTRC access registers

Bug Fixes:

- Added a safety mechanism to prevent the link from to getting stuck when receiving bad tuning results. In this case, the linkup flow is restarted and the mechanism retries to raise the link.
- Improved rate limit token re-distribution algorithm.
- Improved non-consumed bandwidth re-distribution.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in no ping in NODNIC VF when VLAN stripping was enabled.
- Fixed an issue that caused vDPA application initialization to fail due to virtual queue creation failure. The failure comes with the "0x8f7a: ring address translate failed" assert which indicates incorrect permission supplied by QEMU for virtual ring memory.
- CNP received, handled, and ignored counters in the hardware counters cannot work after moving to Programmable Congestion Control mode.

About Network Adapter Firmware:

When connected, the operating system usually installs a generic firmware 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 firmware 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.