NVIDIA MCX623106AC-CDA SmartNIC Firmware 22.35.1012

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.

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 a new OPN: MCX623106PC-CDAT
- 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 support for range based lookup. This new capability is available using the following new PRM command: GENERATE WQE which receives GTA WQE, the command supports "match on range" and num_hash_definer=[1,2] and num_match_ste=[1,2].
- Added support for RoCE based VM migration.
- Added resource dump segments: SEG_HW_STE_FULL that includes dump to STE and all its dependencies and 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).
- Added support for pre-copy commands in VF migration flow in order to reduce the migration downtime.
- Optimized performance to support full VF migration flow.
- Increased the VirtIO hardware offload message rate to 20/20 MPPS for 256 virtual devices by optimizing the datapath application code.
- Enabled ADP timer to allow the user to configure RC or DC qp_timeout values lower than 16.
- QoS priority trust default state can now be changed using the new nvconfig: QOS_TRUST_STATE_P1 and QOS_TRUST_STATE_P2. The values that can be used to set the default state are: TRUST_PORT, TRUST_PCP, TRUST_DSCP, and TRUST_DSCP_PCP

Bug Fixes:

- Improved both TP1a compliance and Physical-layer performance. TX and PLL settings were changed to comply with IEEE 802.3bs TP1a and improved link margins. 
- 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.
- Enabled the firmware to distribute loopback QPs/SQs between all LAG ports during the initial distribution in steering LAG.
- Fixed an issue that due to a firmware limitation, enabling tx_port_ts resulted in syndrome 0x5d2974.
- 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.
- Fixed PCIe SKP OS generation interval for Gen1 and Gen2.
- CPU handling synchronization requires separation (run ptp4l with taskset -c [cpu #] prefix) while running heavy traffic. 
- Changed the Tx setting for optics HDR to improve compliance margins.

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.