Changes and New Feature History
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 |
12.27.2008 | |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes. |
12.27.1016 | |
RoCE Selective Repeat | RoCE Selective Repeat introduces a new QP retransmission mode in RoCE: recovery from packet drop by resending the dropped packet and not only all the PSN window (Go-Back-N protocol),This new capability comes with the following limitations:
|
RedFish (RDE) | Allows BMC to query and control NIC over RedFish API (https://www.dmtf.org/standards/redfish). Currently, the NIC supports reading data and setting basic Ethernet and InfiniBand parameters. |
ECMP with RoCE Traffic | Enables matching of source_vhca_port in the FDB flow for ECMP hardware offload on a single FDB |
Hardware Offloaded Rules (Resource Dump) | Added support for dumping hardware steering entries (raw data) using the resource dump API |
Link Down Counter | The eth_link_down_counter now counts logical link downs as well. |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes |
Rev. 12.26.4012 | |
Globally Disable RoCE through MST | Enables the user to globally disable RoCE on init by writing to the access register NCFG_REG. |
Zero-Touch RoCE (ZTR) Slow Start | Enabled Zero-Touch RoCE (ZTR) slow start capability for responder flows. |
Resource Dump | Extracts and prints data segments generated by the firmware. |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes History. |
Rev. 12.26.1040 | |
ICMD and Diagnostic Counters | 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. |
User Context Object (DEVX) | 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. The following functionalities are still managed by the Kernel:
|
DEVX Support for Asynchronous Events | Added support for reporting the supported affiliated and unaffiliated asynchronous events to DEVX users through the command interface. |
Zero-Touch-RoCE Counters | Zero-Touch-RoCE counters are now available to the user for debuggability purposes when using the Zero-Touch-RoCE feature. |
Security Hardening Enhancements | This release contains important reliability improvements and security hardening enhancements. Mellanox recommends upgrading your device firmware to this release to improve the device firmware security and reliability. |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes History. |
Rev. 12.25.1020 | |
VSC Security | VSC security includes the mechanisms which will prevent a reasonable host from affecting other hosts from using VSC. |
ODP support for SRQ & XRC | Added support for send opcode operations targeting a SRQ/RMP with the receive WQEs using ODP memory. In case the receive WQE receives an ODP, the device will generate ODP notifications (EQE) and PFAULT will abort CQEs. Note: It is recommended to prefetch the memory used by the receive WQEs to reduce ODP occurrence as these have significant latencies and will cause a performance degradation. |
Auto-Sensing when using 25/10GbE Optical Modules | This new capability accelerates the network to auto-sense the port speed and use it when using a 25/10GbE optical module. Meaning, if the used module is 25GbE but the port is a 10GbE port, the speed used for that network will be 10GbE. |
Package ID | Enabled Package ID configuration using server strap according OCP 3.0. |
DPDK UIO | This capability provides a solution for improving user space drivers development, generic user space IO device services. |
mlxconfig | Renamed the BOOT_RETRY_CNT1 parameter to BOOT_RETRY_CNT. |
Reduced Firmware Upgrade Time | Reduced firmware upgrade time using mlxfwreset tool to ~3 seconds. Using this capability requires enabling PARTIAL_RESET_EN in mlxconfig and using MFT version 4.12.0 and up. The “PARTIAL” refers to not resetting the port modules (which is not mandatory for firmware upgrades). Note: Currently this capability only supports firmware upgrade and downgrades to firmware versions newer than XX.25.1020. |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes History. |
Rev. 12.24.1000 | |
Layer 3 Encapsulation | Added support for an additional layer (Layer 3) of packet processing at the hypervisor level that enables adding and removing protocol headers (e.g., the MAC address is removed during encapsulation, and added during decapsulation) for the encapsulated traffic. |
e-switch Steering Rule | Enabled e-switch steering rule in the NIC without matching it with the Directional MACs (DMAC) protocol. Now the rule is only according to the MC/UC bit. |
IB Sniffer Tool | The IB Sniffer utility provides the user the ability to capture the e- switch traffic directly to a hypervisor queue. |
Transmission Histogram Counters | Added support for the transmission histogram counter set as part of the Ethernet extended group counters. |
Events Generation by the Hardware upon Counter Incrementation | Enabled the hardware to generate an event upon counter incrementation, in order to reduce an overhead from the software from reading rarely updated counters such as error counters. |
NODNIC Connectivity | Enables NOIDNIC connectivity to the network through the e-switch and not directly to the physical port. |
QP and Mkey Values | Enabled setting the QP and the Mkey values by the software upon these resources creation. |
PCIe Atomic | Enabled advanced PCIe atomic operations. The HCA will perform PCIe atomic operations as a requestor towards the host memory when receiving compatible atomic messages from the network, and according to the configuration of NV_SW_OFFLOAD_CONFIG pci_atomic_mode field and the PCI AtomicOp Requester Enable bit in the Device Control 2 register. |
TIR Destination from the FDB | Enabled a single TIR destination from the FDB. |
WRED | Changed the WRED default mode to OFF for Multi-Host adapter cards. |
TX Steering Rule on in WQE Ethernet Segment | Added support for TX steering rule on flow_table_metadata in WQE Ethernet segment. |
L3 Encapsulation/Decapsulation in the Reformat Context Allocation | Added L3 encapsulation/decapsulation support in the reformat context allocation.
|
Flow Steering Header Modification | Added support for flow steering header modification (header rewrite) for IPv4 TTL header for loopback traffic (VF-VF/VF-PF). Note: TTL modification for traffic from the network is currently not supported. |
Teardown: Fast Mode | [Developers only] Moved the fast teardown HCA cap bit to offset 0x1c.4:1. |
Virtual Functions/QoS | Enabled Virtual Functions to read QPDPM/QPDP/QPTS. |
Message vs. Payload based flow control QP Configuration | Added support for requester QP packet based on E2E credits mode. The new flow control supports HCA-to-switch RDMA traffic packet-based End-2-End. |
Multi PCI RDMA IB | This capability enables the user to expose two PCI/IB devices per network port. |
Steering | Enabled a single TIR destination from the FDB. Note: TTL modification in the FDB for traffic from the network is currently not supported. |
Bug Fixes | See Bug Fixes History. |