NVIDIA Mellanox MCX516A-CDAT SmartNIC Firmware 16.26.1040

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:
- Security Hardening Enhancements: This release contains important reliability improvements and security hardening enhancements. Mellanox recommends upgrading your devices firmware to this release to improve the devices’ firmware security and reliability.
- SR-IOV - Virtual Functions (VF) per Port - The maximum Virtual Functions (VF) per port is 127.

Changes and New Features:

- Added Address Translation Service (ATS) support for MKEY and UMEM.
- Added support for exposing the VPD on the VF.
- Enabled the firmware by using the ICMD commands to deal with diagnostic counters similar to cmdif. They can be called via the vsec space. The counters’ values are returned only via the tracer. The ICMD Query Caps indicate support and expose the list of the supported counters.
- Added support for Hairpin Drop Counter.
- This is a containerized sandbox per user, to access PRM command securely by using General Object commands, UMEM and UCTX contexts. The allowed functionalities of this capability depend on the user permissions.
- Added support for reporting the supported affiliated and unaffiliated asynchronous events to DEVX users through the command interface.
- Added support for Hairpin and TM RNDV QPs to work with DevX.
- Added support for creating software managed steering tables in eSwitch/FDB.
- Zero-Touch-RoCE counters are now available to the user for debuggability purposes when using the Zero-Touch-RoCE feature.
- This release contains important reliability improvements and security hardening enhancements.

Bug Fixes:

- Updated the firmware behavior to report PLDM version 1.1.0 regardless of whether Redfish is enabled or not.
- On rare occasions, when firmware coalesce Host stuck events occur, a async event might be delayed to be reported, and not be triggered until the next time the PCIe hangs on one of the hosts.
- Limited the maximum amount of dumps created on a PF.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in unexpected queue pairs transitioned to error in lossy tests.
- Renamed the GMP Mellanox Vendor Specific External Capability mask enum from IsDiagnosticCountersSupported to IsDiagnosticDataSupported.
- Fixed a stability issue in RoCE retransmissions under stress affecting Zero-Touch-RoCE.
- Fixed an issue that caused a function to misbehave when a PCIe TLP was set with a poisoned indication.
- Fixed an issue that caused large number of packet to drop when running Jumbo frames with TTL rewrite.
- Limited the number of the elements in the QoS tree 2K.
- Fixed the query QP flow. Instead of always taking port 1, FW will now reply the proper port, 1 or 2, for the dual port RoCE net device.
- Fixed an issue that caused the nack counters to constantly be reported as “0”.
- In a rare scenario when the driver is executing the "2err" command and the QP is in SQ drain state, the firmware might post event of broken WQ instead of sending error CQEs on all the WQEs.

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.