About This Document
NVIDIA® BlueField® DPU software is built from the BlueField BSP (Board Support Package) which includes the operating system and the DOCA framework. BlueField BSP includes the bootloaders and other essentials for loading and setting software components. The BSP loads the official BlueField operating system (Ubuntu reference Linux distribution) to the DPU. DOCA is the software framework and SDK for the development of applications and infrastructure services. DOCA includes runtime libraries; the DOCA Runtime stack for Arm supports various accelerations for storage, networking, and security. As such, customers can run any Linux-based application in the BlueField software environment seamlessly.
This guide provides product release notes as well as information on the BSP and how to develop and/or customize applications, system software, and file system images for the BlueField platform.
Important: Make sure to download the latest available software packages for the procedures documented in this guide to run as expected.
Intended Audience
This document is intended for software developers and DevOps engineers interested in creating and/or customizing software applications and system software for the NVIDIA BlueField DPU platform.
Software Download
To download product software, refer to the DOCA SDK developer zone.
Technical Support
Customers who purchased NVIDIA products directly from NVIDIA are invited to contact us through the following methods:
- E-mail: enterprisesupport@nvidia.com
- Enterprise Support page: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/support/enterprise
Customers who purchased NVIDIA M-1 Global Support Services, please see your contract for details regarding technical support.
Customers who purchased NVIDIA products through an NVIDIA-approved reseller should first seek assistance through their reseller.
Glossary
| 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 |
| BDF address | Bus, device, function address. This is the device's PCIe bus address to uniquely identify the specific device. |
| 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 |
| CBS | Committed burst size |
| CHI | Coherent hub interface; Arm® protocol used over the BlueField Skymesh specification |
| CIR | Committed information rate |
| CL | Cache line |
| CMDQ | Command queue |
| CMO | Cache maintenance operation |
| COB | Collision buffer |
| DAT | Data |
| DEK | Data encryption key |
| DMA | Direct memory access |
| DOCA | DPU SDK |
| DOT | Device ownership transfer |
| DPA | Data path accelerator; an auxiliary processor designed to accelerate data-path operations |
| 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 |
| DW | Dword |
| EBS | Excess burst size |
| ECPF | Embedded CPU physical function |
| EIR | Excess information rate |
| 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 |
| ESP header | Encapsulating security payload |
| EU | Execution unit. HW thread; a logical DPA processing unit. |
| FIPS | Federal Information Processing Standards |
| FPGA | Field-programmable gate arrays |
| FS | File system |
| FW | Firmware |
| GDB | GNU debugger |
| GPT | GUID partition table |
| HCA | Host-channel adapter |
| 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".
|
| HW | Hardware |
| hwmon | Hardware monitoring |
| IB | InfiniBand |
| ICM | Interface configuration memory |
| IKE | Internet key exchange |
| IPMB | Intelligent platform management bus |
| IPMI | Intelligent platform management interface |
| IR | Intermediate representation |
| KGDB | Kernel debugger |
| KGDBOC | Kernel debugger over console |
| LAT | Latency |
| LCRD | Link credit |
| LSO | Large send offload |
| LTO | Link-time optimization |
| MMIO | Memory-mapped I/O |
| MSB | Most significant bit |
| MSS | Memory subsystem |
| MST | Mellanox software tools |
| NAT | Network address translation |
| NIC | Network interface card |
| NIST | National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| NS | Namespace |
| OCD | On-chip debugger |
| OOB | Out-of-band |
| OS | Operating system |
| OVS | Open vSwitch |
| PBS | Peak burst size |
| PCIe | PCI Express; Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| PF | Physical function |
| PIR | Peak information rate |
| PK | Platform key |
| PKA | Public key accelerator |
| POC | Point of coherence |
| RD | Read |
| RDMA | Remote direct memory access |
| RegEx | Regular expression |
| REQ | Request |
| RES | Response |
| RMC | Remote management controller |
| RN | Request node RN-F – Fully coherent request node |
| RNG | Random number generator/generation |
| RoCE | Ethernet and RDMA over converged Ethernet |
| RQ | Receive queue |
| RShim | Random Shim |
| RTT | Round-trip time |
| RX | Receive |
| SA | Security association |
| SBSA | Server base system architecture |
| SDK | Software development kit |
| SF | Sub-function or scalable function |
| SG | Scatter-gather |
| SHA | Secure hash algorithm |
| SMMU | System memory management unit |
| SNP | Snooping |
| SQ | Send queue |
| SR-IOV | Single-root IO virtualization |
| STL | Stall |
| Sync event | Synchronization event |
| TBU | Translation buffer unit |
| TIR | Transport interface receive |
| TIS | Transport interface send |
| TLS | Transport layer security |
| TRB | Trail buffer |
| TSO | TCP send offload |
| TSO | Total store order |
| TX | Transmit |
| UDS | Unix domain socket |
| UEFI | Unified extensible firmware interface |
| UPVS | UEFI persistent variable store |
| VF | Virtual function |
| VFE | Virtio full emulation |
| VM | Virtual machine |
| VPI | Virtual protocol interconnect |
| VST | Virtual switch tagging |
| WorkQ or workq | Work queue |
| WQE | Work queue elements |
| WR | Write |
| WRDB | Write data buffer |
Related Documentation
| Document Name | Description |
|---|---|
| InfiniBand Architecture Specification, Vol. 1, Release 1.3.1 | The InfiniBand Architecture Specification that is provided by IBTA |
| Firmware Release Notes | See Firmware Release Notes |
| MFT Documentation | See Firmware Tools Release Notes and User Manual |
| NVIDIA OFED for Linux User Manual | Intended for system administrators responsible for the installation, configuration, management and maintenance of the software and hardware of VPI adapter cards |
| WinOF Documentation | See WinOF Release Notes and User Manual |
| NVIDIA BlueField-2 BMC Software User Manual | This document provides general information concerning the BMC on the NVIDIA® BlueField®-2 DPU, and is intended for those who want to familiarize themselves with the functionality provided by the BMC |
| NVIDIA BlueField-2 Ethernet DPU User Guide | This document provides details as to the interfaces of the board, specifications, required software and firmware, and a step-by-step plan of how to bring up the BlueField-2 Ethernet DPU |
| NVIDIA BlueField-2 InfiniBand/Ethernet DPU User Guide | This document provides details as to the interfaces of the board, specifications, required software and firmware, and a step-by-step plan of how to bring up the BlueField-2 InfiniBand/VPI DPU |
| NVIDIA BlueField Ethernet DPU User Guide | This document provides details as to the interfaces of the board, specifications, required software and firmware for operating the BlueField Ethernet DPU, hardware installation, driver installation and bring-up instructions |
| NVIDIA BlueField InfiniBand/VPI DPU User Guide | This document provides details as to the interfaces of the board, specifications, required software and firmware for operating the BlueField InfiniBand/VPI DPU, hardware installation, driver installation and bring-up instructions |
| NVIDIA DOCA SDK | The NVIDIA DOCA™ SDK enables developers to rapidly create applications and services on top of NVIDIA® BlueField® data processing units (DPUs), leveraging industry-standard APIs. With DOCA, developers can deliver breakthrough networking, security, and storage performance by harnessing the power of NVIDIA's DPUs. |
| NVIDIA BlueField Reference Platform Hardware User Manual | Provides details as to the interfaces of the reference platform, specifications and hardware installation instructions |
| NVIDIA BlueField Ethernet Controller Card User Manual | This document provides details as to the interfaces of the board, specifications, required software and firmware for operating the card, hardware installation, driver installation and bring-up instructions |
| NVIDIA BlueField UEFI Secure Boot User Guide | This document provides details and directions on how to enable UEFI secure boot and sign UEFI images |
| NVIDIA BlueField Secure Boot User Guide | This document provides guidelines on how to enable the Secure Boot on BlueField DPUs |
| NVIDIA BlueField SNAP and virtio-blk SNAP Documentation | This document describes the configuration parameters of NVMe SNAP and virtio-blk SNAP in detail |
PKA Driver Design and Implementation Architecture Document | This document provides a description of the design and implementation of the Public Key accelerator (PKA) hardware driver. The driver manages and controls the EIP-154 Public Key Infrastructure Engine, an FIPS 140-3 compliant PKA and operates as a co-processor to offload the processor of the host. |
| PKA Programming Guide | This document is intended to guide a new crypto application developer or a public key user space driver. It offers programmers the basic information required to code their own PKA-based application for NVIDIA® BlueField® DPU. |
