NVIDIA MCX713114TC-GEA SmartNIC Firmware 28.44.1036

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.

The ConnectX-7 smart host channel adapter (HCA) provides up to four ports of connectivity and 400Gb/s of throughput, hardware-accelerated networking, storage, security, and manageability services at data center scale for cloud, telecommunications, AI, and enterprise workloads. ConnectX-7 empowers agile and high-performance networking solutions with features such as Accelerated Switching and Packet Processing (ASAP2), advanced RoCE, GPUDirect Storage, and in-line hardware acceleration for Transport Layer Security (TLS), IP Security (IPsec), and MAC Security (MACsec) encryption and decryption. ConnectX-7 enables organizations to meet their current and future networking needs in both high-bandwidth and high-density environments.

The ConnectX-7 smart host channel adapter (HCA), featuring the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand architecture, provides the highest networking performance available to take on the world’s most challenging workloads. ConnectX-7 provides ultra-low latency, 400Gb/s throughput, and innovative NVIDIA In-Network Computing acceleration engines to provide additional acceleration to deliver the scalability and feature-rich technology needed for supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and hyperscale cloud data centers.

Changes and New Features:

- When using a multi-host deployment, each host is assigned unique ports and PFs and manages its own LAG.
- Added support for a new synchronized flow, including a tool and driver, to perform a fwreset on setups with a PCIe switch configuration.
- Unified PTP is now supported across different VFs on the same PF.
- Added support for new MADs: PortRecoveryPolicyConfig and PortRecoveryPolicyCounters. During the PHY recovery process, the firmware core will indicate the port_logical_state as Active.
- Added a new NV config (SM_DISABLE, default 0) which, when enabled, blocks SMP traffic that does not originate from the SM.
- Added the ability to set cable length as a parameter in the PFCC access register. The cable length is used in the calculation of RX lossless buffer parameters, including size, Xoff, and Xon thresholds.

Bug Fixes:

- Increased the RX lossless buffer size to delay the transmission of Pause/PFC frames during NIC congestion.
- Fixed cable info semaphore deadlock.
- Fixed the error handling for the TLV full list, which caused the TLV mechanism to hang.
- Fixed the SPDM GET_CERTIFICATE operation to support all certificate chain offsets and chunk sizes.
- Fixed an issue in VDPA where destroying a virtq would cause a health buffer syndrome with ext_synd=0x8f33 if the virtq was created without an mkey or with unmanned and mapped mkeys during live migration.
- Fixed an issue where the VDPA feature bits GUEST_TSO4 and GUEST_TSO6 were unexpectedly set by default, leading to traffic interruptions.
- Fixed an issue where enabling PCC NP and setting the link type to one port as IB and the other as Ethernet could cause an assert to appear in dmesg with ext_synd 0x8309.
- Added support for SyncE at 1G link speed.
- Added a new mechanism for allocations and deallocations flows to enhance parallelism.

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.