Glossary

Glossary (PDF)

NVIDIA DOCA Glossary

This document provides a list of terms and acronyms in the DOCA documentation.

Term Description
ACE AXI Coherency Extensions
ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
AMBA® Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture
ARB Arbitrate
ATF Arm Trusted Firmware
AXI4 Advanced eXtensible Interface 4
BERT Boot error record table
BF_INST_DIR The directory where the BlueField software is installed
BFB BlueField bootstream
BMC Board management controller
BSD BlueField Software Distribution
BUF Buffer
BSP BlueField support package
CHI Coherent Hub Interface; Arm® protocol used over the BlueField Skymesh specification
CL Cache line
CMDQ Command queue
CMO Cache maintenance operation
COB Collision buffer
DAT Data
DMA Direct memory access
DOCA DPU SDK
DPDK Data Plane Development Kit
DPI Deep packet inspection
DPU Data Processing Unit, the third pillar of the data center with CPU and GPU
DVM Distributed virtual memory
ECPF Embedded CPU Physical Function
EMEM/EMI External memory interface; block in the MSS which performs the actual read/write from the DDR device
eMMC Embedded Multi-media Card
ESP EFI system partition
FS File system
FW Firmware
GDB GNU debugger
GPT GUID partition table
HNF Home node interface
Host

When referring to "the host" this documentation is referring to the server host. When referring to the Arm based host, the documentation will specifically call out "Arm host".

  • Server host OS refers to the Host Server OS (Linux or Windows)
  • Arm host refers to the AARCH64 Linux OS which is running on the BlueField Arm Cores
HW Hardware
hwmon Hardware monitoring
IB InfiniBand
ICM Interface Configuration Memory
IPMB Intelligent Platform Management Bus
IPMI Intelligent Platform Management Interface
KGDB Kernel debugger
KGDBOC Kernel debugger over console
LAT Latency
LCRD Link credit
MSS Memory subsystem
MST Mellanox Software Tools
NAT Network address translation
NIC Network interface card
OCD On-chip debugger
OOB Out-of-band
OS Operating system
OVS Open vSwitch
PCIe PCI Express; Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
PF Physical function
PK Public key
PKA Public key accelerator
POC Point of coherence
RD Read
RegEx Regular expression
REQ Request
RES Response
RN

Request node

RN-F – Fully coherent request node

RN-D – IO coherent request node with DVM support

RN-I – IO coherent request node

RNG Random number generator/generation
RoCE Ethernet and RDMA over Converged Ethernet
RQ Receive queue
RShim Random Shim
RX Receive
SBSA Server Base System Architecture
SDK Software development kit
SF Sub-function or scalable function
SMMU System memory management unit
SNP Snooping
SQ Send queue
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
STL Stall
TBU Translation Buffer Unit
TRB Trail buffer
TSO Total store order
TX Transmit
UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UPVS UEFI Persistent Variable Store
VF Virtual function
VM Virtual machine
VPI Virtual Protocol Interconnect
VST Virtual Switch Tagging
WR Write
WRDB Write data buffer

Notice

This document is provided for information purposes only and shall not be regarded as a warranty of a certain functionality, condition, or quality of a product. NVIDIA Corporation nor any of its direct or indirect subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively: “NVIDIA”) make no representations or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document and assume no responsibility for any errors contained herein. NVIDIA shall have no liability for the consequences or use of such information or for any infringement of patents or other rights of third parties that may result from its use. This document is not a commitment to develop, release, or deliver any Material (defined below), code, or functionality.

NVIDIA reserves the right to make corrections, modifications, enhancements, improvements, and any other changes to this document, at any time without notice.

Customer should obtain the latest relevant information before placing orders and should verify that such information is current and complete.

NVIDIA products are sold subject to the NVIDIA standard terms and conditions of sale supplied at the time of order acknowledgement, unless otherwise agreed in an individual sales agreement signed by authorized representatives of NVIDIA and customer (“Terms of Sale”). NVIDIA hereby expressly objects to applying any customer general terms and conditions with regards to the purchase of the NVIDIA product referenced in this document. No contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document.

NVIDIA products are not designed, authorized, or warranted to be suitable for use in medical, military, aircraft, space, or life support equipment, nor in applications where failure or malfunction of the NVIDIA product can reasonably be expected to result in personal injury, death, or property or environmental damage. NVIDIA accepts no liability for inclusion and/or use of NVIDIA products in such equipment or applications and therefore such inclusion and/or use is at customer’s own risk.

NVIDIA makes no representation or warranty that products based on this document will be suitable for any specified use. Testing of all parameters of each product is not necessarily performed by NVIDIA. It is customer’s sole responsibility to evaluate and determine the applicability of any information contained in this document, ensure the product is suitable and fit for the application planned by customer, and perform the necessary testing for the application in order to avoid a default of the application or the product. Weaknesses in customer’s product designs may affect the quality and reliability of the NVIDIA product and may result in additional or different conditions and/or requirements beyond those contained in this document. NVIDIA accepts no liability related to any default, damage, costs, or problem which may be based on or attributable to: (i) the use of the NVIDIA product in any manner that is contrary to this document or (ii) customer product designs.

No license, either expressed or implied, is granted under any NVIDIA patent right, copyright, or other NVIDIA intellectual property right under this document. Information published by NVIDIA regarding third-party products or services does not constitute a license from NVIDIA to use such products or services or a warranty or endorsement thereof. Use of such information may require a license from a third party under the patents or other intellectual property rights of the third party, or a license from NVIDIA under the patents or other intellectual property rights of NVIDIA.

Reproduction of information in this document is permissible only if approved in advance by NVIDIA in writing, reproduced without alteration and in full compliance with all applicable export laws and regulations, and accompanied by all associated conditions, limitations, and notices.

THIS DOCUMENT AND ALL NVIDIA DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS, REFERENCE BOARDS, FILES, DRAWINGS, DIAGNOSTICS, LISTS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS (TOGETHER AND SEPARATELY, “MATERIALS”) ARE BEING PROVIDED “AS IS.” NVIDIA MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE WITH RESPECT TO THE MATERIALS, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NONINFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL NVIDIA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED AND REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THIS DOCUMENT, EVEN IF NVIDIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Notwithstanding any damages that customer might incur for any reason whatsoever, NVIDIA’s aggregate and cumulative liability towards customer for the products described herein shall be limited in accordance with the Terms of Sale for the product.

Trademarks

NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, and Mellanox are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Mellanox Technologies Ltd. and/or NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and in other countries. The registered trademark Linux® is used pursuant to a sublicense from the Linux Foundation, the exclusive licensee of Linus Torvalds, owner of the mark on a world¬wide basis. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Copyright

© 2022 NVIDIA Corporation & affiliates. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Sep 28, 2022.