DOCA Pipeline Language Developer Tool

This section describes the NVIDIA DOCA Pipeline Language (DPL) Developer Tools, which are used to inspect and debug DPL programs on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs.

For details on creating, compiling, and running DPL programs, refer to the DOCA Pipeline Language Services Guide.

NVIDIA provides the following DPL developer tools for validation and debugging:

• DPL Compiler: converts DPL source code into a binary blob that can be loaded by the DPL Runtime daemon on the DPU

• P4 Runtime Shell: open-source control plane manager that implements the P4Runtime API

• DPL Nspect: command-line interface (CLI) for inspecting the current state of tables, keys, counters, and more

• DPL Debugger: user interface for debugging packet flow within a DPL program

• DPL Admin: CLI for dynamically modifying configuration items in the DPL Runtime daemon

• DPL Runtime Controller SDK: developer SDK that allows you to build and integrate a custom application that uses P4Runtime and DPL shared memory APIs

These tools interact with the DPL Runtime daemon (dpl_rtd) running on BlueField.

1. DPL Runtime Service

   1. The DPL Runtime Service container must be set up and running. This service manages the DPL Runtime daemon.

   2. dpl_rtd must be active on a BlueField DPU and configured to operate in DPU mode on the host machine.

2. DPL program compiled for debugging:

   1. Compile the DPL program using the DPL Compiler with the debug option enabled (for example, dplp4c.sh -g).

   2. Load the compiled binary into dpl_rtd using the P4Runtime controller.

      Info

      For further details, refer to Compiling DPL Applications.

The developer tools are included in the DPL Development Container, which is publicly available on NGC. For installation instructions, refer to the DPL Installation Guide.