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

22.37.1014

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.

Feature/Change

Description

22.35.2000

PCC Algorithm

Enables the users to collect more information from NP to RP for PCC algorithm. To achieve this, the NP ingress bytes information was added to the RTT response packet sent from the NP side.

HPCC: Support per-IP and per-QP Methods

Enables the user to configure the PCC algorithm shaper coalescing mode using nvconfig to select CC algorithm shaper coalescing for IB and ROCE.
The new parameters are IB_CC_SHAPER_COALESCE and ROCE_CC_SHAPER_COALESCE.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

Feature/Change

Description

22.35.1012

HPCC, Programmable Congestion Control

HPCC related configurations in is now supported via the mlxconfig utility.

UDP

Added support for copy modify header steering action to/from the UDP field.

Range based Lookup

Added support for range based lookup. This new capability is available using the following new PRM command:

GENERATE WQE which receives GTA WQE, the command supports "match on range" and num_hash_definer=[1,2] and num_match_ste=[1,2].

For further information, refer to section "RTC Object Format" in the PRM.

RoCE based VM Migration

Added support for RoCE based VM migration.

Resource Dump

Added the following resource dump segments:

  • SEG_HW_STE_FULL that includes dump to STE and all its dependencies

  • SEG_FW_STE_FULL that include dump to FW_STE and to HW_STE_FULL in range

Striding WQE - Headroom and Tail-room

As the software requires additional space before and after a packet is scattered for its processing for stridden RQ, the hardware will allocate the required room while scattering packets to spare a copy.

Connections per Second (CPS)

Improved security offload's Connections per Second (CPS) rate using the general object DEK (PSP TLS etc).

VF Migration Flow

Added support for pre-copy commands in VF migration flow in order to reduce the migration downtime.

VF Migration Flow

Optimized performance to support full VF migration flow.

VirtIO vDPA Performance Virtualization

Increased the VirtIO hardware offload message rate to 20/20 MPPS for 256 virtual devices by optimizing the datapath application code.

RoCE: Adaptive Timer

Enabled ADP timer to allow the user to configure RC or DC qp_timeout values lower than 16.

QoS Priority Trust Default State

QoS priority trust default state can now be changed using the new nvconfig below:

  • QOS_TRUST_STATE_P1

  • QOS_TRUST_STATE_P2

The values that can be used to set the default state are:

  • TRUST_PORT

  • TRUST_PCP

  • TRUST_DSCP

  • TRUST_DSCP_PCP

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Sep 5, 2023.