Changes and New Feature History

PCIe Congestion Events

Added support for the general PCIe congestion object to monitor and receive events related to inbound and outbound PCIe congestion. A threshold can be configured to specify when the firmware should send an event to the software.

This capability is activated by setting the mlxconfig parameter PCIE_CONGESTION_MONITOR.

Reading the Board ID from the EEPROM

Enabled reading the board ID from the EEPROM on the pluggable board and adjusting the configuration accordingly. For a 2×QSFP112 board (board_id=4), the firmware replaces the default 1×OSFP configuration with support for 2 QSFP ports.

Safely Identify DPUs/SmartNICs is a Machine and PCIe Slot

A new access register is introduced that accepts a type, length, and R/W command.

• Write operation: Allocates a new ICMC buffer of the specified size (aligned to 64B) and stores the provided data. If a buffer for the given type already exists, the data in the ICMC is overwritten, and the locked area is adjusted accordingly

• Read operation: If a buffer exists, its data is copied out. If not, the access register returns a size of 0 or an explicit error

The length can be stored within the data in the ICMC, and the type is mapped to 256B chunks (due to access register limitations), so the VA of the buffer is calculated as (base + (type << 8)). The first 4 bytes store a validity flag and the length. If length storage is unnecessary (e.g., null-terminated data), a hardware read can use a cache-line hit as a validity bit.

This feature is designed for limited use cases and does not address multi-host scenarios or broader ICMC utilization implications.

RSS with Crypto Offload

Added support for RSS with crypto offload enabling the NIC to parallelize packet processing across CPU cores while performing encryption/decryption in hardware. Additionally, introduced a new l4_type_ext parameter with values: 0 (None), 1 (TCP), 2 (UDP), 3 (ICMP).

Incoming NC-SI Messages Validation for the payload_len Field

Added an extra validation for the payload_len field in incoming NC-SI messages. Previously, invalid packets might have been accepted; now, such packets are silently dropped.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

SPDM

Introduced a 1ms delay for SPDM responses.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

Multi-host LAG

When using a multi-host deployment, each host is assigned unique ports and PFs and manages its own LAG.

PCIe Switch fwreset

Added support for a new synchronized flow, including a tool and driver, to perform a fwreset on setups with a PCIe switch configuration.

PTP

Unified PTP is now supported across different VFs on the same PF.

MADs

Added support for new MADs: PortRecoveryPolicyConfig and PortRecoveryPolicyCounters. During the PHY recovery process, the firmware core will indicate the port_logical_state as Active.

Block SMP Traffic

Added a new NV config (SM_DISABLE, default 0) which, when enabled, blocks SMP traffic that does not originate from the SM.

Dynamic Long Cables

Added the ability to set cable length as a parameter in the PFCC access register. The cable length is used in the calculation of RX lossless buffer parameters, including size, Xoff, and Xon thresholds.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.

PCIe Telemetry

Added support for PCIe Telemetry (NSM Type 2).

Programmable Congestion Control (PCC)

Migrated PCC NP solution from ACE hardware platform to DPA hardware platform. The new capability is applicable to the following 2 modes:

• PCC_INT_EN=True and PCC_INT_NP_RTT_DATA_MODE=INGRESS_BYTE

• PCC_INT_EN=True and PCC_INT_NP_RTT_DATA_MODE=NO_DATA

The first mode is used to support ZTRCC RX bytes in RTT response.

RDMA Telemetry

Added the option to indicate an error CQE event on every selected function per eSwitch manager. This indication is defined as a new WQE including the relevant information about the error (such as: syndrome, function_id, timestamp, QPs num etc.).

The feature is configured using a new general object: RDMA-Telemetry object, and depends on the following new caps: HCA_CAP.rdma_telemetry_notification_types and HCA_CAP.rdma_telemetry.

UID Permissions

Extended kernel lockdown permission set. The following sub-operations can now be called by tools (permission TOOLS_RESORCES) using new HCA capability bitmask field: tool_partial_cap.

The 5 sub-operations are:

• QUERY_HCA_CAP with other function

• QUERY_VUID with direct data

• QUERY_ROCE_ADDRESS with other vport

• SET_HCA_CAP with other function

• POSTPONE_CONNECTED_QP_TIMEOUT with other vport

The new added caps are:

• tool_partial_cap.postpone_conn_qp_timeout_other_vport,

• tool_partial_cap.set_hca_cap_other_func

• tool_partial_cap.query_roce_addr_other_vport

• tool_partial_cap.query_vuid_direct_data

• tool_partial_cap.query_hca_cap_other_func

Cross E-Switch Scheduling

Added support for QoS scheduling across multiple E-Switches grouped in a LAG. VPort members of a Physical Function can be added to a rate group from another Physical Function and rate limits of the group will apply to those VPort members as well.

Jump from NIC_TX to FDB_TX

Added 'table_type_valid' and 'table_type' fields to the steering action (STC) "Jump To Flow" table parameters to enable the user to jump from NIC_TX to FDB_TX and bypass the ACL table.

Jump to TIR or queue from FDB on Tx

Enabled hop reduction by bypassing NIC domain in various use cases. Such action r educes the number of hops (improves PPS) to deal with mass number of flows and devices.

To enable this new capability, a new STC action type "JUMP_TO_FDB_RX" was added to allow jumping into the RX side of a table.

Flex Parser: ARC-IN and ARC-OUT

Increased the maximum number of supported "ARC-IN" from 1 to 8 and "ARC-OUT" from 3 to 8 for the dynamic flex parser.

PSP Crypto Offload

[Alpha] Added support for PSP Crypto offload transport mode.

ZTR_RTTCC Histogram

Added histogram support for rate and Round-Trip Time (RTT) in PCC ZTR_RTTCC.

Bug Fixes

See Bug Fixes in this Firmware Version section.