Windows Support

BlueField Windows support from the host-side is facilitated by the WinOF-2 driver. For more information on WinOF-2 (including installation), please refer to the WinOF-2 Documentation.

RShim drivers provide functionalities like resetting the Arm cores, pushing a bootstream image, as well as some networking and console functionalities. For more information on RShim driver usage, please refer to WinOF-2 Documentation > Features Overview and Configuration > RShim Drivers and Usage.

The BlueField DPU can be accessed via PuTTY or any other network utility application to communicate via virtual COM or virtual Ethernet adapter. To use COM:

  1. Open Putty.

  2. Change connection type to Serial.

  3. Run the following command in order to know what to set the "Serial line" field to:

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    C:\Users\username\Desktop> reg query HKLM\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\SERIALCOMM | findstr MlxRshim \MlxRshim\COM3 REG-SZ COM3

    In this case use COM3. This name can also be found via Device Manager under "Ports (Com & LPT)".

    device-manager-screenshot.png

  4. Press Open and hit Enter.

    PuTTY.png

To access via BlueField management network adapter, configure an IP address as shown in the example below and run a ping test to confirm configuration.

Windows_Example.png

The device does not support any type of stateful or stateless offloads. This is indicated to the Operating System accordingly when the driver loads. The MAC address is a pre-defined MAC address (CA-FE-01-CA-FE-02). The following registry keys can be used to change basic settings such as MAC address.

Registry Name

Description

Valid Values

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\<nn>\*JumboPacket

The size, in bytes, of the largest supported Jumbo Packet (an Ethernet frame that is greater than 1514 bytes) that the hardware can support.

1514 (default) - 2048

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\<nn>\*NetworkAddress

The network address of the device. The format for a MAC address is: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX.

CA-FE-01-CA-FE-02 (default)

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\<nn>\ReceiveBuffers

The number of receive descriptors used by the miniport adapter.

16 – 64 (Default)

For instructions on how to find interface index in the registry (nn), please refer to section "Finding the Index Value of the Network Interface" in the WinOF-2 User Manual under Features Overview and Configuration > Configuring the Driver Registry Keys.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Sep 9, 2023.