NVIDIA BlueField DPU BSP v3.8.5

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, 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".

  • Server host OS refers to the Host Server OS (Linux or Windows)

  • Arm host refers to the AARCH64 Linux OS which is running on the BlueField Arm Cores

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
RN-D – IO coherent request node with DVM support
RN-I – IO 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.

© Copyright 2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Dec 11, 2023.