Modes of Operation

The NVIDIA® BlueField® networking platform (DPU or SuperNIC) has several modes of operation:

DPU mode, or embedded function (ECPF) ownership, where the embedded Arm system controls the NIC resources and data path
Zero-trust mode which is an extension of the ECPF ownership with additional restrictions on the host side
NIC mode where BlueField behaves exactly like an adapter card from the perspective of the external host

Note

The default mode of operation for the BlueField DPU is DPU mode

The default mode of operation for the BlueField SuperNIC is NIC mode

For more information, please refer to NVIDIA BlueField Modes of Operation.