Several updates have been released for DGX Spark and GB10 machines from other vendors. However, change logs are not available.
Even the “DGX Spark Release Notes - DGX Spark User Guide” website doesn’t cover recent changes.
It would be nice to see release notes or change logs available when updates are released.
There are some release notes here:
Although I’ll note that even after doing sudo apt-get update and then accepting the update in the dashboard and rebooting, if I run cat /etc/dgx-release then I still see:
DGX_NAME="DGX Spark"
DGX_PRETTY_NAME="NVIDIA DGX Spark"
DGX_SWBUILD_DATE="2025-09-10-13-50-03"
DGX_SWBUILD_VERSION="7.2.3"
DGX_COMMIT_ID="833b4a7"
DGX_PLATFORM="DGX Server for KVM"
DGX_SERIAL_NUMBER="Not Specified"
But the release notes above say that 7.3.0 was released on Oct 30th.
The 7.3.0 release is for x86 only. From the release notes DGX OS ISO 7.3.0 for DGX Systems on x86_64 Architecture Nothing it it for the Spark 🙁
Details of what was updated at Release Notes — NVIDIA DGX OS 7 User Guide
Ah, that explains why I didn’t have it. There is now a 7.3.1 on that page which includes ARM, and my machine has updated to.
Today an update was announced via X.
With more beef regarding the changes. Ah. And it was posted in here 4h ago:
One notable improvement is new kernel is better with model loading (but only without mmap). Not as good as 6.17, but a big improvement: for llama.cpp gpt-oss-120b we are talking about a decrease from 108 seconds to 27 seconds!
You can turn off mmap for vllm too by using --safetensors-load-strategy eager, but it will consume more memory this way. No penalty for llama.cpp, though.
I don’t hit “Update” button when DGX Dashboard says “Update”. I use “Software Updater” to see what it is trying to update. So I saw these interesting updates last night, and more today as well. Hopefully these fix all those instabilities we (hats off to you, fearless trail blazers!) have experienced and fought last few weeks.
— Last night
— Today
If you missed and want to see what are those packages are:
# Show all packages that were installed, removed, or upgraded last 2 days.
zcat -qf /var/log/dpkg.log* \
| awk -vDate="$(date -d '2 days ago' +'%Y-%m-%d')" '$1 >= Date' \
| grep -E ' install | upgrade | remove '
There are important firmware updates in this release, and Software Updater won’t handle them. Run fwupdmgr get-upgrades to see what’s new. Interestingly, the update option in the DGX Dashboard included the new firmware packages.
Right, according to this documentation the dashboard update process performs the following actions:
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo fwupdmgr refresh
sudo fwupdmgr upgrade
sudo reboot
… these fix all those instabilities we (hats off to you, fearless trail blazers!) … and here’s also a little thank you to you, from me (and maybe a few others too) who were hiding in your backpacks ;)
I run through the documented process for the various sudo commands. The update process seems to complete and reboots without issue. When I run hostnamectl I see that the firmware date returned is 2025-08-06.
Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
Kernel: Linux 6.14.0-1013-nvidia
Architecture: arm64
Hardware Vendor: NVIDIA
Hardware Model: NVIDIA_DGX_Spark
Firmware Version: 5.36_0ACUM018
Firmware Date: Wed 2025-08-06
Firmware Age: 3month 2w 1d
Is this the current firmware date or should it be more recent?
There are multiple firmware blobs in the Spark besides the BIOS!
hostnamectl return the bios version which is 5.36_0ACUM018 dated 08/06/2025
The most important upgrade in the last release is the DGX Spark SoC FW which claims to have improves the performance and stability of the System-on-Chip Firmware including UEFI and GPU in DGX Spark:
└─UEFI Device Firmware:
│ Device ID: 0681fd3882fb4fdca996e412ec249365f6e85838
│ Previous version: 0x02008433
│ Update State: Success
│ Last modified: 2025-11-19 16:40
│ GUID: b488217b-3895-4fc0-b1bf-ab7005a2d45a
│ Device Flags: • Internal device
│ • Updatable
│ • System requires external power source
│ • Supported on remote server
│ • Needs a reboot after installation
│ • Device is usable for the duration of the update
│ • Signed Payload
│
└─DGX Spark SoC FW System Update:
New version: 0x02009009
Remote ID: lvfs
Release ID: 130971
Summary: DGX Spark SoC Firmware Update
License: Proprietary
Size: 30.4 MB
Created: 2025-10-24
Urgency: High
Vendor: NVIDIA
Duration: 5 minutes
Release Flags: • Trusted metadata
Description:
This update improves the performance and stability of the System-on-Chip Firmware including UEFI and GPU in DGX Spark
Checksum: 71a880b7565f6ab4e55874acf0fc962caa2368c843bb5943376ca46d733ee9c8
Use fwupdmgr get-history for more info.
The get-history output lines up perfectly.
@elsaco Thank you.
Thank you @elsaco for fwupdmgr get-history. Didn’t know that option. I was really hoping the new firmware update will somehow upgrade USBs to USB 4. But it still stuck at USB 3.2 gen 2x2 max 20 Gbps.
WAIT! What’s this? Who’s spying on me? I don’t see it on yours. Shutting down DGX Dashboard…
