The trouble with a HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530T Adapter
Thursday, May 23. 2019
A while back I got my hands on a nice PCIe 2.0 network interface card.
The thing looks like this:
In theory, that's an extremely cool piece to run in one of my Linuxes. Two 10 gig ethernet ports! Whoa!
Emphasis on phrase "in theory". In practice it's just a piece of junk. That's not because it wouldn't work. It does kinda work. I have to scale down the DDR3 RAM speed into 800 MHz just to make the hardware boot. Doing that will get 12 GiB RAM out of 16 available. Something there eats my PCIe lanes and forces them to work at unacceptable low speeds.
This is a serious piece of hardware, for example in Amazon.com the going price for such item is $340 USD. Given the non-functional state of this, I got this with a fraction of it. Given my personal interest in such toys, I had to go for it. This time it didn't pan out.
Maybe HPE support site phrase for this at https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03663929 explains it all: "PCIe 2.0 compliant form factor designed for HPE ProLiant servers". I'm not running it on a HP ProLiant. 
On a Linux, it does work ok. Kernel driver bnx2x detects and runs the NIC instantly. Linux lspci info:
# lspci -s 02:00.0 -vv -n
02:00.0 0200: 14e4:168e (rev 10)
Subsystem: 103c:18d3
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- SERR- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
Region 0: Memory at f4000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]
Region 2: Memory at f3800000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]
Region 4: Memory at f4810000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K]
Expansion ROM at f7580000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold-)
Status: D0 NoSoftRst+ PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-
Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data
Product Name: HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2P 530T Adptr
Read-only fields:
[PN] Part number: 656594-001
[EC] Engineering changes: A-5727
[MN] Manufacture ID: 103C
[V0] Vendor specific: 12W PCIeGen2
[V1] Vendor specific: 7.15.16
[V3] Vendor specific: 7.14.38
[V5] Vendor specific: 0A
[V6] Vendor specific: 7.14.10
[V7] Vendor specific: 530T
[V2] Vendor specific: 5748
[V4] Vendor specific: D06726B36C98
[SN] Serial number: MY12---456
[RV] Reserved: checksum good, 197 byte(s) reserved
End
Capabilities: [a0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=32 Masked-
Vector table: BAR=4 offset=00000000
PBA: BAR=4 offset=00001000
Capabilities: [ac] Express (v2) Endpoint, MSI 00
DevCap: MaxPayload 512 bytes, PhantFunc 0, Latency L0s <4us, L1 <64us
ExtTag+ AttnBtn- AttnInd- PwrInd- RBE+ FLReset+ SlotPowerLimit 75.000W
DevCtl: CorrErr+ NonFatalErr+ FatalErr+ UnsupReq+
RlxdOrd- ExtTag+ PhantFunc- AuxPwr+ NoSnoop+ FLReset-
MaxPayload 128 bytes, MaxReadReq 512 bytes
DevSta: CorrErr+ NonFatalErr- FatalErr- UnsupReq+ AuxPwr- TransPend-
LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 5GT/s, Width x8, ASPM L0s L1, Exit Latency L0s <1us, L1 <2us
ClockPM+ Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes Disabled- CommClk+
ExtSynch- ClockPM- AutWidDis- BWInt- AutBWInt-
LnkSta: Speed 5GT/s (ok), Width x8 (ok)
TrErr- Train- SlotClk+ DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-
DevCap2: Completion Timeout: Range ABCD, TimeoutDis+, LTR-, OBFF Not Supported
AtomicOpsCap: 32bit- 64bit- 128bitCAS-
DevCtl2: Completion Timeout: 50us to 50ms, TimeoutDis-, LTR-, OBFF Disabled
AtomicOpsCtl: ReqEn-
LnkCtl2: Target Link Speed: 2.5GT/s, EnterCompliance- SpeedDis-
Transmit Margin: Normal Operating Range, EnterModifiedCompliance- ComplianceSOS-
Compliance De-emphasis: -6dB
LnkSta2: Current De-emphasis Level: -3.5dB, EqualizationComplete-, EqualizationPhase1-
EqualizationPhase2-, EqualizationPhase3-, LinkEqualizationRequest-
Capabilities: [100 v1] Advanced Error Reporting
UESta: DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq- ACSViol-
UEMsk: DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq- ACSViol-
UESvrt: DLP+ SDES+ TLP- FCP+ CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF+ MalfTLP+ ECRC- UnsupReq- ACSViol-
CESta: RxErr- BadTLP- BadDLLP- Rollover- Timeout- AdvNonFatalErr+
CEMsk: RxErr- BadTLP+ BadDLLP+ Rollover+ Timeout+ AdvNonFatalErr+
AERCap: First Error Pointer: 00, ECRCGenCap+ ECRCGenEn- ECRCChkCap+ ECRCChkEn-
MultHdrRecCap- MultHdrRecEn- TLPPfxPres- HdrLogCap-
HeaderLog: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Capabilities: [13c v1] Device Serial Number d0-67-26---------------
Capabilities: [150 v1] Power Budgeting
Capabilities: [160 v1] Virtual Channel
Caps: LPEVC=0 RefClk=100ns PATEntryBits=1
Arb: Fixed- WRR32- WRR64- WRR128-
Ctrl: ArbSelect=Fixed
Status: InProgress-
VC0: Caps: PATOffset=00 MaxTimeSlots=1 RejSnoopTrans-
Arb: Fixed- WRR32- WRR64- WRR128- TWRR128- WRR256-
Ctrl: Enable+ ID=0 ArbSelect=Fixed TC/VC=01
Status: NegoPending- InProgress-
Capabilities: [1b8 v1] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)
ARICap: MFVC- ACS-, Next Function: 1
ARICtl: MFVC- ACS-, Function Group: 0
Capabilities: [1c0 v1] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
IOVCap: Migration-, Interrupt Message Number: 000
IOVCtl: Enable- Migration- Interrupt- MSE- ARIHierarchy-
IOVSta: Migration-
Initial VFs: 16, Total VFs: 16, Number of VFs: 0, Function Dependency Link: 00
VF offset: 8, stride: 1, Device ID: 16af
Supported Page Size: 000005ff, System Page Size: 00000001
Region 0: Memory at 00000000f4820000 (64-bit, prefetchable)
Region 4: Memory at 00000000f48a0000 (64-bit, prefetchable)
VF Migration: offset: 00000000, BIR: 0
Capabilities: [220 v1] Resizable BAR
Capabilities: [300 v1] Secondary PCI Express
Kernel driver in use: bnx2x
Kernel modules: bnx2x
If anybody has any suggestions/ideas what to try, I'll be happy to test any of them. Also, my suggestion for anybody planning to get one is to NOT pay any money for it.
Odom on :