10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1203.02 Ethernet Driver Release Notes, Edition 2

CNA overview
The CNA is a PCIe device that can be configured by HP-UX as a number of LAN devices depending
on the system configuration. Most CNAs are dual-ported. Each port represents a single wired
connection to a piece of network hardware, as follows:
• In a Blade Virtual Connect environment, the CNA is configured in Flex-10 mode. Each port
is logically divided into as many as four individual devices, which share the total bandwidth
of the network connection. One of these individual devices on each port can be an FCoE
device.
• In other environments, the CNA is configured as two individual devices per port, one FCoE
and one LAN device, depending on the hardware configuration, both sharing the bandwidth
of the network connection.
Combo overview
A 10Gbe/Fibre Channel combo card is a PCIe device that HP-UX configures for a given port as
both an NIC device and an FC device. A dual-port adapter, such as the AT094A, consists of two
NIC ports and two FC ports. Each NIC (or LAN) device has a physical connection to the network.
Each FC device has a physical connection to an FC fabric. Each LAN device has a 10-gigabit
connection to the network; bandwidth is not shared between the LAN and FC devices.
Features
First 10 GigEthr CNA driver.
Dave W: In addition to what's in 10GigEthr-02 . “For CNA, you can go in two directions – just
use what you have below (referring to the list of features and to the discussion of Virtual Connect
option)– it’s fine. You can also leverage something from:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/solutions/converged/ff-4aa0-7725enw.pdf
See 10GigEthr-02 Features (except 10GigEthr-03 is not first Virtual Connect!
New and changed features in this release
New features
New features introduced with 10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1203.02
The 10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1203.02 release introduces performance enhancements to
the existing driver.
New features introduced with 10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1203
The following features are new with this version of 10GigEthr-03:
• Direct I/O (DIO) support
Direct IO networking gives the LAN device driver direct control of the device's IO. This
minimizes device emulation overhead that would be incurred with accelerated virtual I/O
(AVIO). In HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM environments, AVIO I/O devices are para-virtualized
and do not allow the guest operating system to directly control the hardware. With direct I/O,
the LAN device driver runs on the guest and directly controls devices that have no emulation.
As such, direct I/O performs better than AVIO.
Features 5