10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1303 Ethernet Driver Release Notes (Edition 3, June 2013 Update)

New features introduced with 10GigEthr-03 (iocxgbe) B.11.31.1209

This release introduces performance enhancements to the existing driver and adds support for

Online Addition, Replacement, and Deletion (OL*) of PCIe standup network adapters on Superdome

2 servers. With this feature, the server does not need to be powered off to perform any of these

operations on a network adapter.

The feature is supported with the following network adapters on Superdome 2 servers:

• AT094A

• AT111A

• AT118A

Support of this feature requires the following be installed on your Superdome 2 server:

• The latest version of the NIC (iocxgbe) and Fibre Channel (fcoc) drivers (B.11.31.1209

or later)

• HP-UX operating system B.11.31.1209 or later

• The latest version of the Superdome 2 firmware recipe (3.32 or later)

For more information about the OL* feature, see the Interface Card OL* Support Guide at the

following location:

http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-core-docs (select HP-UX 11i v3)

For information about the olrad command used for online addition, replacement, and deletion

of PCI I/O adapters, refer to the olrad(1m) manpage on any HP-UX 11i v3 system.

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 10GigEthr-03 B.11.31.1203:

• 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.

• PCI error handling and recovery

Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) failures account for a significant percentage of errors

in computer systems. The PCI Error Recovery (PCI ER) feature enables:

◦ Detection of PCI bus parity errors

◦ Isolation of the failed I/O path

◦ Automatic recovery of adapters from errors

With this feature enabled (by default), if an error occurs on a PCI bus containing an I/O

adapter that supports PCI Error Recovery:

◦ The PCI bus is quarantined to isolate the system from I/O and prevent harm to the system.

◦ PCI ER attempts to recover from the error and to reinitialize the bus so that I/O can resume.