NVIDIA Mellanox MCX516A-BDAT SmartNIC Firmware 16.26.4012

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.

Changes and New Features:

- Enables the user to globally disable RoCE on init by writing to the access register NCFG_REG.
- Enabled Zero-Touch RoCE (ZTR) slow start capability for responder flows.
- Extracts and prints data segments generated by the firmware.
- Hairpin QP buffer is now available in Flow Control. Host Chaining now supports full fairness between several devices.

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed an issue that caused the link to go down for 5 seconds when the other port link was down in dual port NICs. This occured due to a small noise passing through the PLL and the transceiver which are more sensitive to noise.
- Fixed a rare issue that caused the device to hang when encountering RDMA read operations with very short retry time. In this case, the driver failed to load due to wait_fw_init (mlx5_load_one failed with error code -16).
- Increased the bandwidth for RoCE scenarios using a specific QPN.
- Enabled lower granularity of rate for Congestion Control.
- Set the min_time_between_cnps default value as 2.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the meter counter from being cleared after the flow meter being updated. In this case, the Information rate took up to 10 minutes to take effect.
- Fixed an issue that caused a unequal cost multipath when device set the lag_tx_port_affinity of the QP.
- Fixed a performance degradation issue that occurred when the flow group match criteria includes both IPV6 and IP_ECN.
- Fixed a low performance issue that occurred occasionally when ran firmware steering with high insertion rate during “adding and removing” low table entries.
- When working with Multi-GVMI and SR-IOV, and with a high number of Virtual Functions and sub-functions, the driver start may fail for the VFs/sub-functions.
- SX_RDMA is not supported when Dual Port RoCE feature is enabled. Due to this behavior, packets sent on other port are be processed by the SX_RDMA table.
- Fixed a performance issue that occurred when ran numerous VMs with NIC Steering rules.
- Creating an NVMoF offloaded target while running the LFWP flow may cause the device to become unstable.
- sw_reset action fails in case it is initiated during live-patch flow.
- Enabled the option to prevent clock and capture CPLD GPIOs glitch upon firmware reset.
- Fixed an issue that slowed the firmware flows when executing many destroy XRQ commands on an XRQ that supported DC transport service.
- Fixed an issue that caused performance degradation when working in dual-port devices under bidirectional traffic stress.

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.

  It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available.

Try to set a system restore point before installing a device driver. This will help if you installed an incorrect or mismatched driver. Problems can arise when your hardware device is too old or not supported any longer.