New features and functions

• DISRUPTIVE:  Support was added for installing and running mixed levels of P9 processors on the system in compatibility mode.
  
• Support added for PCIe4 2-port 100Gb ROCE RN adapter with feature code #EC66 for AIX and IBM i.  This PCIe Gen4 Ethernet x16 adapter provides two 100 GbE QSFP28 ports.
• Support was added to enable mirrored Hostboot memory.
  

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• HIPER/Non-Pervasive:   A problem was fixed for a potential problem that could result in undetected data corruption.
• DEFERRED:   A problem was fixed for the Input Offset Voltage (VIO) to the processor being set too low, having less margin for PCIe and XBUS errors that could cause a higher than normal rate of processor or PCIe device failures during the IPL or at run time.
• A problem was fixed for truncated firmware assisted dumps (fadump/kdump).  This can happen when the dumps are configured with chunks > 1Gb.
• A problem was fixed for the default gateway in the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) IPv4 network configurations showing as 0.0.0.0 which is an invalid gateway IP address.  This problem can occur if ASMI is used to clear the gateway value with blanks.  
  
• A problem was fixed for the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) displaying the IPv6 network prefix in decimal instead of hex character values.  The service processor command line "ifconfig" can be used to see the IPv6 network prefix value in hex as a circumvention to the problem.
• A problem was fixed for link speed for PCIe Generation 4 adapters showing as "unknown"  in the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) PCIe Hardware Topology menu.
• A problem was fixed for the system crashing on  PCIe errors that result in guard action for the FRU.
• A problem was fixed for an extraneous SRC B7000602 being logged intermittently when is the system is being powered off.  The trigger for the error log is a HMC request for information that does not complete before the system is shut down.  If the HMC sends certain commands to get capacity information (eg, 0x8001/0x0107) while the CEC is shutting down, the SFLPHMCCMD task can fail with this assertion.   This error log may be ignored.
• A problem was fixed for the service processor Thermal Management not being made aware of a Power Management failure that the hypervisor had detected.  This could cause the system to go into Safe Mode with degraded performance if the error does not have recovery done.
  
• A problem was fixed for the On-Chip Controller (OCC) being held in reset after a channel error for the memory.  The system would remain in Safe Mode (with degraded performance) until a re-IPL of the system. The trigger for the problem requires the memory channel checkstop and the OCC not being able to detect the error.  Both of these conditions are rare, making the problem unlikely to occur.
• A problem was fixed for the memory bandwidth sensors for the P9 memory modules being off by a factor of 2.  As a workaround, divide memory sensor values  by 2 to get a corrected value.
• A problem was fixed for known bad DRAM bits having  errors logs being generated repeatedly with each IPL.  With the fix, the error logs only occur one time at the initial failure  and then thereafter the known bad DRAM bits are repaired as  part of the normal memory initialization.
• A problem was fixed for a Hostboot run time memory channel error where the processor could be called out erroneously instead of the memory DIMM.  For this error to happen, there must be a RCD parity error on the memory DIMM with a channel failure attention on the processor side of the bus and no channel failure attention on the memory side of the bus, and the system must recover from the channel failure.
• A problem was fixed for DDR3 DIMM memory training where the ranks not being calibrated had their outputs enabled.  The JEDEC specification requires that the outputs be disabled.  Adding the termination settings on the non-calibrating ranks can improve memory margins ( thereby reduce the rate of memory failures), and it matches the memory training technique used for the DDR4 memory.
• A problem was fixed for a PCIe2 4-port Slot Adapter  with feature code #2E17  that cannot recover from a double EEH error if the second error occurs during the EEH recovery.  Because is a double-error scenario, the problem should be very infrequent.
• A rare problem was fixed for slow downs in a Live Partition Mobility migration of a partition with Active Memory Sharing (AMS).  The AMS partition does not fail but the slower performance could cause time-outs in the workload if there are time constraints on the operations.
• A problem was fixed for isolation of memory channel failure attentions on the processor side of the differential memory interface (DMI) bus.  This only is a problem if there are no attentions from the memory module side of the bus and it could cause the service processor run time diagnostics to get caught in hang condition, or result in a system checkstop with the processor called out.
• A problem was fixed for the memory bandwidth sensors for the P9 memory modules sometimes being zero.
• A problem was fixed for  deconfiguring checkstopped processor cores at run time.  Without the fix, the processor core checkstop error could cause a checkstop of the system and a re-IPL,  or it could force the system into Safe Mode.
• A problem was fixed for a failed TPM card preventing a system IPL, even after the card was replaced.
• A problem was fixed for differential memory interface (DMI) lane sparing to prevent shutting down a good lane on the TX side of the bus when a lane has been spared on the RX side of the bus.  If the  XBUS or DMI bus runs out of spare lanes, it can checkstop the system, so the fix helps use these resources more efficiently.
• A problem was fixed for IPL failures with SRC BC50090F when replacing Xbus FRUs.  The problem occurs if VPD has a stale bad memory lane record and that record does not exist on both ends of the bus.
• A problem was fixed for SR-IOV adapter dumps hanging with low-level EEH events causing failures on VFs of other non-target SR-IOV adapters.
• A problem was fixed for SR-IOV VF configured with a PVID  that fails to function correctly after a virtual function reset.  It will allow receiving untagged frames but not be able to transmit the untagged frames.
• A problem was fixed for SR-IOV VFs, where a VF configured with a PVID  priority may be presented to the OS with an incorrect priority value.
  
• A problem was fixed for a Self Boot Engine (SBE) recoverable error at run time causing the system to go into Safe Mode.
• A problem was fixed for a rare Live Partition Mobility migration hang with the partition left in VPM (Virtual Page Mode) which causes performance concerns.  This error is triggered by a  migration failover operation occurring during the migration state of "Suspended" and there has to be insufficient VASI buffers available to clear all partition state data waiting to be sent to the migration target.  Migration failovers are rare and the migration state of "Suspended" is a migration state lasting only a few seconds for most partitions, so this problem should not be frequent.  On the HMC, there will be an inability to complete either a migration stop or a recovery operation.  The HMC will show the partition as migrating and any attempt to change that will fail.  The system must be re-IPLed to recover from the problem.
• A problem was fixed for Self Boot Engine (SBE) failure data being collected from the wrong processor if the SBE is not running on processor 0.  This can result in the wrong FRU being called out for SBE failures.
  

System firmware changes that affect certain systems

• On systems which do not have a HMC attached,  a problem was fixed for a firmware update initiated from the OS from FW920.00 to FW920.10 that caused a system crash one hour after the code update completed.  This does not fix the case of the OS initiated firmware update back to FW920.00 from FW920.10 which will still result in a crash of the system.  Do not initiate a FW920.10  to FW920.00 code update via the operating system.  Use only HMC or USB methods of code update for this case.  If a HMC or USB code update is not an option,  please contact IBM support.
  
• A problem was fixed for Linux or AIX partitions crashing during a firmware assisted dump or when using Linux kexec to restart with a new kernel.  This problem was more frequent for the Linux OS with kdump failing with "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init" in some cases.
• On a system with an IBM i partition with more than 64 virtual processors assigned to it, a problem was fixed for a possible system crash or other unexpected behavior when doing a partition dump IPL
• On a system with an IBM i partition, a problem was fix for I/O operations timeouts with SRCs B600512D and B6005275 logged and IBM i performance degradation.  This problem only occurs with heavy I/O traffic.

• GA Level