Linux Kernel Upstream Release Notes v6.4

Changes and New Features

Upstream Kernel 6.4

Internal Ref.

Feature

Description

Support Added in User Space Version

Support Added in Firmware Version

ASAP2 Features

3412747

Offloaded Connections

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for deleting offloaded connections by running conntrack -D.

N/A

N/A

3309368

VxLAN Group Based Policy (GBP) Offload

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for hardware offload of VxLAN with GBP configured.

N/A

N/A

3204401

Representor Inside Namespace

[All HCAs] Added support for using switchdev mode for a devlink device within a net namespace. This includes full usage of uplink and VF representors within the net namespace of the devlink device, enabling isolated routing.

N/A

N/A

3180556

OVS Offload with MACVLAN Interface Above Bond

[ConnectX-5 and above] Added support for OVS offload when MACVLAN interface above bond is attached to OVS bridge.

N/A

N/A

3180548

CT with Header Rewrite

[BlueField-2] Added support for offloading CT rules with header rewrite of L3.

N/A

N/A

3158449

CT with NAT and Mirroring

[BlueField-2] Added support for offloading CT rules with NAT and mirroring.

N/A

N/A

3119303

mlx5_vdpa: Mergeable Buffer Support

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for Enabled Mergeable Buffer feature on vdpa interfaces using vdpa tool to achieve better performance with large MTUs.

iproute v6.3

xx.37.1014

2211199

mlx5_vdpa: Posted Interrupts

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for posted interrupts in mlx5_vdpa, allowing direct IRQ propagation from the NIC to vCPU within the guest.

iproute v6.3

xx.37.1014

2700002

Linux Bridge Multicast Offload

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for multicast control path packet snooping (IGMP/MLD) and offload of MDB notifications in order to replicate multicast traffic to multiple destinations in the hardware.

N/A

xx.37.1014

Core Features

3196184

Relaxed Ordering in VFs

[ConnectX-6 and above] Added support for using Relaxed Ordering in VFs directly and in VFs assigned to QEMU. Relaxed Ordering can significantly improve performance on certain setups and, until now, it could be used only in PFs.

N/A

xx.37.1014

2982389

QEMU Support for Device Dirty Page Tracking

[ConnectX-7 and above] Added support for QEMU to do device dirty page tracking during migration. This allows QEMU to use this capability to mark only the pages that were actually dirtied by the device as dirty instead of the entire memory. This significantly improves migration downtime and makes migration feasible.

Note that device dirty page tracking with vIOMMU is not yet supported.3196184

QEMU v8.0

xx.36.1010

NetDev Features

3193125

Hairpin Queues Configuration

[ConnectX-5 and above] Added the ability to configure the number and size of hairpin queues through devlink param command.

For example:

devlink dev param set pci/0000:08:00.0 name hairpin_queue_size value 512 cmode driverinit

devlink dev param set pci/0000:08:00.0 name hairpin_num_queues value 1 cmode driverinit

N/A

N/A

3015462

mlx5 driver Page Management via Kernel's Page Pool

[ConnectX-4 and above] Removed the internal Rx path from the internal page cache to always use the kernel's page_pool for improved performance.

N/A

N/A

2938348

XDP Enhancements

[ConnectX-5 and above] Implemented the following modifications in XDP in order to enhance performance:

  1. Added XDP multi-buffer support to the default RQ type (Striding RQ).

  2. Added support for XDP multi-buffer redirect-in.

  3. Allowed non-linear single-segment frames in XDP TX MPWQE.

N/A

N/A

RDMA Features

3259484

Monitoring VF RoCE Statistics on the Host Side

[All HCAs] Added support for the host system to expose and utilize a VF representor to monitor and track the same counters as the VF itself. This allows the host system to keep track of various statistics associated with the VF, even after it has been allocated to a VM.

N/A

xx.37.1014

2320718

Selective Repeat Protocol

[ConnectX-7 and above] Added support for Selective Repeat (SR) protocol to be enabled by default. The SR protocol retransmits only the specific damaged frame, rather than resending all the previously sent frames. This selective approach results in more efficient utilization of network bandwidth.

N/A

xx.37.1014

Security

3004432

MACsec Support for VLAN with Inner and Outer Headers

[ConnectX-7 and above] Added support for MACsec configuration on top of a VLAN with both an inner and outer headers.

N/A

xx.34.1002

Steering

3325721

IB BTH Matching in RoCE Packets

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Added support for matching the IB BTH in RoCE packets. This enables users to perform monitoring based on specific values within the BTH field, such as monitoring R oCEv2 CNP by matching BTH opcode 0x81.

rdma-core

N/A

2205563

Enhanced modify_header Firewall Object Design

[ConnectX-6 Dx and above] Updated the design of the modify_header firewall object to incorporate patterns and arguments. This enhancement allows for the handling of modify_header actions in a larger number of flows by utilizing a single pattern with different arguments across various flows.

N/A

N/A

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