Changes and New Feature History

NVIDIA ConnectX-5 Adapter Cards Firmware Release Notes v16.35.3502 LTS
Warning

This section includes history of changes and new feature of 3 major releases back. For older releases history, please refer to the relevant firmware versions.

Feature/Change

Description

22.38.1002

INT Packets

Added support for forwarding INT packets to the user application for monitoring purposes by matching the BTH acknowledge request bit (bth_a).

IPsec CPS Bulk Allocation

Improved the IPsec CPS by using bulk allocation.

For cases in which log_obj_range == 0, single IPSEC object will be allocated and initialized as before keeping backward compatibility.

For better performance, it is recommended to work with IPsec bulk allocation and to initialize IPsec ASO context not via the firmware but via the hardware using ASO WQE.

QKEY Mitigation in the Kernel

Non-privileged users are now blocked by default from setting controlled/privileged QKEYs (QKEY with MSB set).

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

Feature/Change

Description

22.37.1014

Mergeable Buffer

Added mergeable buffer support (VIRTIO_NET_F_MRG_RXBUF in virtio spec) for VDPA kernel mode to improve performance in case of large MTU such as 9K. The feature is disabled by default and must be manually enabled while creating or modifying the virtio device.

Note: For best performance, it is NOT recommended to enable the feature if the VDPA MTU is set to the default value (1500).

Monitoring Cloud Guest RoCE Statistics on Cloud Provider

This new capability enables the VM to track and limit its Vport's activity. This is done using the new q_counters counter which enables aggregation of other Vport's from PF GVMI.

Linux Bridge Offload

Added a flow rule that enables offloading of multicast traffic by broadcasting it to multi-Flow-Table in FDB.

PCC Algorithms

Enables a smooth and statically switch between PCC algorithms. In addition, the user can now switch between PCC algorithms while running traffic.

PCC Firmware Trace

Added support for running PCC firmware trace without saving and sending the DB strings to the tool with the following changes:

  • Added new string section to the user PCC image creation tool

  • Added the new PCC DB strings to MTRC access registers output

  • On the tool's part: added support to reading the string.db using the MTRC access registers

Hardware Steering: Bulk Allocation

Added support for 32 actions in the header modify pattern using bulk allocation.

InfiniBand Congestion Control - RTT Response Service Level

The software can explicitly set the SL of an RTT response packet, instead of it being taken from the RTT request packet's SL.

The RTT response packet SL may be set/queried via the CONGESTION_CONTROL_HCA_NP_PARAMETER MAD.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

Feature/Change

Description

22.36.1010

NVconfig

Enabled provisioning of the OEM public key that is used for OEM NVconfig file signature verification.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

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