About This Document
NVIDIA® BlueField® DPU operating system (OS) is a reference Linux distribution based on the Ubuntu Server distribution extended to include DOCA runtime libraries, the DOCA Runtime stack for Arm and a Linux kernel that supports various accelerations for storage, networking, and security. As such, customers can run any Linux-based applications in the BlueField software environment seamlessly.
These pages provide product release notes as well as information on the BlueField software distribution (BSD) and how to develop and/or customize applications, system software, and file system images for the BlueField platform.
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, please refer to the DOCA SDK developer zone.
Technical Support
Customers who purchased products directly from NVIDIA are invited to contact us on the NVIDIA Support website.
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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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".
|
| 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 |
| 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 |
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 Mellanox Firmware Tools Release Notes and User Manual |
| NVIDIA Mellanox 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 Mellanox 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 Mellanox BlueField DPU Software Quick Start Guide | This document provides procedure to get started with your NVIDIA BlueField DPU |
| 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/VPI 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 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 Mellanox NVMe 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. |
