NVIDIA MCX753436MS-HEA SmartNIC Firmware 28.39.1002

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.

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:

- Added support for two passthrough channels on dual-port adapter cards.
- Added a caching mechanism to improved expansion ROM performance and to avoid any slow boot occurrences when loading the expansion ROM driver.
- Added support for image size above 4GB when performing a live migration by splitting the image to chunks.
- Extended the role-based authentication to cover all crypto algorithms. Now the TLS. IPsec. MACsec. GCM, mem2mem, and NISP work when nv_crypto_conf.crypto_policy = CRYPTO_POLICY_FIPS_LEVEL_2, meaning all cryptographic engines can also work in wrapped mode and not only in plaintext mode.
- Added the ability to configure the DSCP (priority) of ACK packets using the ROCE_ACCL access register.
- Added internal monitoring and external notification mechanism to detect over access to the flash interface and reduce access to it to avoid exceeding some hardware limitation on that interface. In extreme cases, if this mechanism is not sufficient, the user will be notified.
- Added new support for reserved mkey index range. When enabled, a range of mkey indexes is reserved for mkey by name use.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed an issue that led to packet drops on lossless fabric due to an Rx buffer overflow.
- Fixed a code mismatch in the process of handling the cause to the link being down when the remote faults were received.
- Fixed a wrong parameter in the cable info MAD that resulted in unnecessary messages in the log.
- Disabled PCI power event messages on OCP 3.0 adapter cards according to the spec requirements.
- Fixed an issue that caused the buffer for PLDM firmware update that were pending NIC requests to not being properly locked in case of PLDM-over-NC-SI, and consequently being corrupted by other flows.
- Fixed an issue that prevent MSI Interrupts from being advertised correctly, resulting in the wrong MSI being sent.
- "Get Temperature" OEM command now always returns a unified temperature.
- Changed the bar configuration algorithm so that the last update to the bar address will be the one that takes affect when the host configures the same bar address for two different PFs.
- Fixed an issue that caused the firmware to miscalculate the value of the maximum current temperature measured from all the diodes (found in the Internal_sensor_curr_temp field).
- Improved SPDM v1.0 compatibility.
- Fixed a HW bug that resulted in transaction loss that when cache replacement transaction occurs in parallel to code transcoding.
- The eeprom module gets stuck in polling in 20% of the times after reset. To resolve the issue, a delay after config module to high power was added.
- Fixed a linkup failure issue that occurred when connecting to a 25GbE transceiver by clearing the PSI Aging before trying to open Tx power.
- The "Bad Signal Integrity" message seen after power cycle can be safely ignored. The user should monitor BER number.
- Fixed a statics issue that caused the i2c access to module to lock and stuck the switch.
- Added support for hairpin drop counter in QUERY_VNIC_ENV command.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the get_func_num_from_pci_func_num function from returning the value "-1" for undefined function type.
- Fixed Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) value calculation for correct readings from the MMA4Z00 optical cable module.
- Added a locking mechanism to protect the firmware from a race condition between insertion and deletion of the same rule in parallel. Such behavior occasionally resulted in firmware accessing a memory that has already been released, thus causing IOMMU / translation error. Note: This fix will not impact insertion rate for tables owned by SW steering.
- Fixed a race condition that led to a firmware assert upon driver removal, or when changing the ETH flow control scheme in case of a stress of larger than MTU ingress packets.
- Fixed QoS Shaper handling behavior for non-transmitting applications.

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.