Having several K1 and K2 board bought over several months, I am wondering whether or not I should be concerned that some of my boards have an older VBIOS.
It would be great if:
*) There was a place we could find the release notes for the GRID vbios
*) There was a document with some guidelines regarding recommend vbios versions. E.g. if you are using a GRID card under XenServer 6.X or VMware 5.x then you should really have vbios x.x installed. If not please contact your server vendor to get the firmware upgrade. The same could go if the card is installed inside a specific server.
I am certainly not looking at upgrading the vbios if I do not have to. But it would be nice if I had a place to check.
I am also confused by the what the standard procedures should be for GRID cards with different firmware/VBIOS levels. Some feedback from NVIDIA on if, when, and how any updates could or should be undertaken would be very valuable. Most people don’t buy sacks of these devices at the same time and put them in the pantry for use somewhere down the road, but rather in small lots. Hence, the chance for devices purchased over a spread in time to differ in some configuration parameters just increases.
In general, it is not necessary to upgrade the firmware of GRID cards. Feature enhancements are driven through the graphics driver. The latest versions are available on http://www.nvidia.com/drivers.
In the rare instance of a needed firmware update, we provide new firmwares to the OEMs which distribute them to their customers. Please contact your OEM for more information.
Last fall we released such an update which enabled the support of multiple monitors for virtual desktops. All boards purchased past Nov 2013 have this new firmware factory installed.