Power7 High-End System Firmware

06/13/12

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• DEFERRED:  The firmware was enhanced to fix a potential performance degradation on systems utilizing the stride-N stream prefetch instructions dcbt (with TH=1011) or dcbtst (with TH=1011).  Typical applications executing these algorithms include High Performance Computing, data intensive applications exploiting streaming instruction prefetchs, and applications utilizing the Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) 5.1.
• The firmware was enhanced to correctly handle bus errors between the P7 processor chip and the I/O hub chip.
• The firmware was enhanced to correctly diagnose the failing FRU when SRC B1xxE504 with error signature "MCFIR[14] - Hang timer detector" was logged.
• The firmware was enhanced to improve the FRU callouts when the number of multi-bit errors on a POWER7 processor bus exceeds the threshold.  This reduces the number of FRUs replaced on a failing system.
• A problem was fixed the caused a system to crash when the system was in low power (or safe mode), and the system attempted to switch over to nominal mode.
• The firmware was enhanced to reduce the impact of heavy volume errors, which can be logged as "sender hang" errors.
• The firmware was enhanced to reduce the number of "retry fetch CE" and "DRAM spare" error logs entries that call out memory DIMMs.
• A problem was fixed that caused the first processor module in a node to be erroneously called out if an over-temperature condition was detected, instead of the processor module that was reporting the over-temperature condition.
• The firmware was enhanced to handle the I/O hub ISR (Integrated Switch Router) link port errors as software-recoverable, rather than as hard failures.  Before this enhancement, the links would have been guarded out even though these errors were recoverable.
• A problem was fixed that caused a service processor kernel panic due to an out-of-memory condition, with SRC B181720D.

• On systems with F/C 5708 and 5270 Dual port 10GB Ethernet adapter cards installed, a problem was fixed that caused SRC B7006970 to be erroneously logged when the card was powered on.
• In asymmetric and cross-coupled topologies, if there are no direct dlink connections between a storage drawer and a compute supernode (either through fail-in-place or through having a compute drawer or drawers at standby), then the storage drawer, upon restart or re-initialization of the lnmc daemon (lnmcd), does not provide a failover route to the target compute supernode even though there are suitable bounce points within the compute sub-cluster that can provide the indirect route.  The firmware was enhanced to provide this indirect route.
  

04/12/12

New Features and Functions

• Support for cross-coupled compute-to-storage topology for a 2 drawer storage sub-cluster.
  
• Support for cross-coupled compute-to-storage topology for a 4 drawer storage sub-cluster.
  

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• The firmware was enhanced to allow a node to continue to boot when unrecoverable SRC B181B70C is logged.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused an extraneous error log entry calling out DCCA-B and hub R5 when power was removed from DCCA-A, and the service processor and TPMD in DCCA-A were primary.
• The firmware was enhanced to more gracefully handle the system shutdown that is required when a hypervisor hang condition was encountered.  SRCs B7000602, B182951C, B1813918 and A7001151 were logged, and a service processor failover occurred, when the hypervisor hang condition and subsequent system crash occurred.
  
• The firmware was enhanced to cause the secondary service processor to automatically pick up configuration changes stored on the primary service processor.  This prevents the new configuration information from being lost if a service processor failover occurs before the secondary has picked up the new configuration information; typically this problem will only be encountered just after a system is installed.
• The firmware was enhanced to gracefully recover, and log the correct error logs, if the secondary DCCA loses power.
• A problem was fixed that prevented communication between the compute and storage networks in asymmetric ISR network topologies.  This affected network topologies DD2_64_8_2A, DD2_64_8_2B, DD2_64_8_4A, and DD2_64_8_4B.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B181E6F1 ("RMGR_PERSISTENT_EVENT_TIMEOUT") to be erroneously logged.
• The firmware was enhanced to reduce the number of memory DIMMs replaced due to correctable errors being logged.
• A problem was fixed that caused unrecoverable SRC B130CD03 to be erroneously logged.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7000602 to be erroneously logged at power on.
• The firmware was enhance to prevent a potential deadlock in the opposite-side storage drawer if all of the cross-coupled dlinks between a compute supernode (at runtime) and a storage drawer (at runtime) are taken down.  This problem also affects indirect routing from compute to storage over cross-coupled links.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused the Local Network Management Controller (LNMC) to be set to the wrong state during a service processor (DCCA) fail-over.  If this problem occurs, the most likely symptom will be a communication failure on the ISR network.
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition running AIX to crash.
• A new level of optical link firmware is included in this service pack, and the optical link firmware update function is enabled.  The new optical link device firmware will be automatically installed the next time the node is booted after this service pack is installed.  Please see "Additional Details About Installing This Service Pack" in the "Important Information" section.
• The firmware was enhanced to increase the threshold of soft NVRAM errors on the service processor to 32 before SRC B15xF109 is logged.  (Replacement of the service processor is recommended if more than one B15xF109 is logged per week.)