The NVIDIA Mellanox MCX613436A-VDAI SmartNIC is a state-of-art server adapter that has recently been updated with firmware version 20.28.4000. The SmartNIC helps to fully address the CPU limitations caused by network I/O processing that has been amplified with the exponential growth of data and associated demands for network workload.

List of Features

• Unified Wire
• Dual 100/50/25/10 or Single 40/56/100GbE ports
• EDR 100G InfiniBand
• PCI Express 3.0 x16 or x8 low profile, add-in card form factor
• Support SR-IOV, NVMe-over-fabric
• Support for DPDK, Boost (Async) and GPUDirect

Specifications

Using Technologies

The NVIDIA Mellanox MCX613436A-VDAI SmartNIC can take advantage of several different technologies, including:

• SR-IOV: Enables multiple virtual functions (VF) to share the same physical NIC
• NVMe-over-fabric: Extends the use of NVMe over a fabric
• DPDK: The Data Plane Development Kit is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing

Known Issues and Troubleshooting

Some well-known issues experienced by customers when working with NVIDIA Mellanox MCX613436A-VDAI SmartNIC and its firmware could include:

• Driver compatibility issues
• Dropped packets or high packet latency issues, particularly at the highest data rates
• Design issues that can cause the NIC services to fail until the system is rebooted

SmartNIC Driver

The SmartNIC driver package comes with various driver components for Windows and Linux operating systems. By navigating to the Mellanox site or the NVIDIA site, you can find the right version of the driver for your operating system.