Supported Interfaces
The BF2500 DPU Controller is a FHHL card. The component height on the top and bottom of the card complies with the PCIe specification. The below figures show the connector and LED designations.
The below figures are for illustration purposes only and might not reflect the current revision of the BF2500 card.
BF2500 DPU Controller - Component Side
BF2500 DPU Controller - Print Side
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Callout |
Interface |
Description |
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1 |
.Supported Interfaces v1.0#BlueField-2 Data Processing Unit (DPU) |
BlueField-2 DPU with heatsink |
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2 |
.Supported Interfaces v1.0#PCIe x16 Gen 3.0/4.0 Edge Connector |
The interface between the BlueField-2 Controller and the JBOF system. |
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3 |
The network ports of the ConnectX®-6 adapter cards are compliant with the InfiniBand Architecture Specification, Release 1.3. InfiniBand traffic is transmitted through the cards' QSFP56 connectors. |
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Ethernet traffic is transmitted through the controller’s QSFP56 connectors. The QSFP56 connectors allow for the use of Optical modules and cable interconnect solutions. |
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4 |
Single-channel with 8 DDR4 8 bit + ECC (64bit + 8bit ECC) 16GB @ 3200MT/s |
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5 |
Connectivity channel between the BMC CPU and the BlueField-2 Arm Array |
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6 |
USB Type-B Bracket mounted on card |
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7 |
1GbE BASE-T OOB management interface. |
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8 |
.Supported Interfaces v1.0#External PCIe Power Supply Interfaces |
Along with the PCIe interface, this connector provides power to the board. |
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9 |
One bi-color LED per port. |
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10 |
Battery for RTC. |
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11 |
16GbE x8 NAND flash10 |
BlueField-2 Data Processing Unit (DPU)
BlueField-2 is a family of advanced DPU solutions that integrate a coherent mesh of 64-bit Arm v8 A72 cores, a ConnectX network adapter front-end and a PCI Express switch into a single chip. The powerful DPU architecture includes an Armv8 multicore processor array and enables customers to develop sophisticated applications and highly differentiated feature sets. BlueField-2 leverages the rich Arm software ecosystem and introduces the ability to offload the host server software stack.
At the heart of BlueField-2 is the ConnectX-6 Dx network offload controller with RDMA and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) technology, delivering cutting-edge performance for networking and storage applications such as NVMe over Fabrics. Advanced features include an embedded virtual switch with programmable access lists (ACLs), transport offloads and stateless encaps/decaps of NVGRE, VXLAN, and MPLS overlay.
Encryption
Applies to Crypto enabled OPNs.
BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller addresses the concerns of modern data centers by combining hardware encryption accelerators with embedded software and fully integrated advanced network capabilities, making it an ideal platform for developing proprietary security applications. It enables a distributed security architecture by isolating and protecting each individual workload and providing flexible control and visibility at the server and workload level, controlling risk at the server access layer. BlueField-2 builds security into the DNA of the data center and enables prevention, detection, and response to potential threats in real-time. BlueField-2 DPU Controller can deliver powerful functionality, including encryption of data-in-motion, and data-at-rest (AES-XTS) bare-metal provisioning, stateful L4 firewall and more.
InfiniBand QSFP56 Interface
The network ports of the BlueField-2 DPU Controllers are compliant with the InfiniBand Architecture Specification, Release 1.3. InfiniBand traffic is transmitted through the cards' QSFP56 connectors.
Ethernet QSFP56 Interfaces
The network ports of the BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller are compliant with the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards listed in Ethernet traffic is transmitted through the cards' QSFP56 connectors.
QSFP56 Port Over-current Protection
The power consumption for each QSFP56 module is controlled by a 5W current limiting power distribution switch. Every power limiting switch is controlled by a signal, which is enabled by default. This signal is originated from the thermal shutdown mechanism. When the output load exceeds the current limit threshold, the power switch limits the current to a safe level.
PCI Express Interfaces
The PCI Express bus is a high-speed interface used to connect the DPU Controller to other peripheral devices (the BMC, PCIe switch or directly to the NVMe SSDs backplane), and operates as a Root-Complex (RC) initiating PCIe bus operations. The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller supports PCI Express Gen 3.0/4.0 (1.1 and 2.0 compatible) through x16 edge connector which serves as the main interface of the card. This connector enables the connectivity of the system to the BlueField-2 PCIe interface.
The following lists PCIe interface features:
PCIe Gen 4.0 and 3.0 compliant, 2.0 and 1.1 compatible
2.5, 5.0, or 8.0, or 16.0 GT/s link rate x16
Auto-negotiates to x8, x4, x2, or x1
Support for MSI/MSI-X mechanisms
DDR4 Memory
The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller incorporates one on-board DDR4 memory sized 16GB, 64-bit data and 8-bit Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory.
The following lists the supported DDR4 data rates:
1600 Mb/s
1866 Mb/s
2133 Mb/s
2400 Mb/s
2666 Mb/s
2933 Mb/s
3200 Mb/s
GbE OOB Management
The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller incorporates a 1GbE RJ45 out-of-band port that allows the network operator to establish trust boundaries in accessing the management function to apply it to network resources. It can also be used to ensure management connectivity (including the ability to determine the status of any network component) independent of the status of other in-band network components.
1GbE OOB Management LEDs Interface
There are two I/O LEDs, LED1 is green and LED2 is Amber, to indicate link activity as described in the below table.
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LED Pin |
LED Definition |
Link Activity |
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LED2 (Amber) |
OFF |
Link OFF |
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ON |
Link ON (Any speed) |
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LED1 (Green) |
OFF |
No Activity |
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Blinking |
Activity (RX, Tx) |
NC-SI Management Interface
The Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) enables the connection of a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) to a card for the purpose of enabling out-of-band remote manageability. NC-SI over the RMII interface is routed through the RMII connector with a flat cable.
The UART0 debug interface is connected to the NC-SI connector through the following pins:
Pin # 30 - UART0 RX
Pin # 28 - UART0 TX
Pin # 26 - GND
The UART interface is complaint with TTL 3.3V voltage level.
UART Interface Connectivity
The USB to UART cable that supports TTL voltage levels can be used to connect the UART Interface for Arm console access. See an example of TTL 3.3V voltage levels cable in the below figure.
Please note that the USB to UART cable is not used for NC-SI management purposes.
It is prohibited to directly connect any RS-232 cable! Only TTL 3.3V voltage level cables are supported!
USB to UART Cable - Example
Mini USB Type B Connector
The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller uses a Mini USB 2.0 Type B device. The purpose of the USB connector is debugging and loading new versions of the operating systems and firmware.
External PCIe Power Supply Interfaces
The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller consumes power from two power sources; an external +12V through an 6-pin ATX connector (reference #9) and an additional +12V through the PCIe x16 edge connector. The BF2500 DPU Controller’s special circuitry balances the power consumption between these two power sources. Each power source must be capable of supplying up to 75W of power. The 3.3V AUX from the card’s PCIe edge connector is used for logics on the BF2500 DPU Controller. This logic includes power for buffering logic for signals to the card’s edge connector, power for the FRU EEPROM, and miscellaneous items. The 3.3V from PCIe edge connector is floating on the board. For the external PCIe power supply pins, please refer to External Power Supply Interfaces.
The use of an external power supply interface is restricted to the ATX 6-pin PCIe power connector only.
eMMC Interface
The BlueField-2 BF2500 DPU Controller incorporates an eMMC interface on the card's print side. The eMMC is 16GB x8 NAND flash and is used for Arm boot, operating system storage and disk space.
Networking LED Interfaces
There is a one bi-color I/O LED per port to indicate link status. See the below figure for the networking LEDs locations on the BF2500 DPU Controller bracket.
LED1 and LED2 Link Status Indications - Ethernet Protocol:
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LED Color and State |
Description |
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Off |
A link has not been established |
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Beacon command for locating the adapter card |
1Hz blinking Yellow |
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Error |
4Hz blinking Yellow Indicates an error with the link. The error can be one of the following:
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Solid green |
Indicates a valid link with no active traffic |
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Blinking green |
Indicates a valid link with active traffic |
LED1 and LED2 Link Status Indications - InfiniBand Protocol:
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LED Color and State |
Description |
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Off |
A link has not been established |
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Beacon command for locating the adapter card |
1Hz blinking Yellow |
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Error |
4Hz blinking Yellow Indicates an error with the link. The error can be one of the following:
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Solid amber |
Indicates an active link |
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Solid green |
Indicates a valid (data activity) link with no active traffic |
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Blinking green |
Indicates a valid link with active traffic |
RTC Battery
The BF2500 DPU Controller incorporates a COIN TYPE LITHIUM BATTERY CR621 for RTC (Real Time Clock).
The BlueField-2 DPU incorporates an eMMC interface on the card's print side. The eMMC is 16GbE x8 NAND flash and is used for Arm boot, operating system storage and disk space.