Nvidia BlueField-3 - Introduction; System Requirements

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1 Introduction
The NVIDIA® BlueField®-3 data processing unit (DPU) Controller is the 3rd-generation data center
infrastructure-on-a-chip that enables organizations to build software-defined, hardware-accelerated
IT infrastructures from cloud to core data center to edge. With 200Gb/s Ethernet or NDR200 200Gb/
s InfiniBand network connectivity, BlueField-3 DPU Controller offloads, accelerates, and isolates
software-defined networking, storage, security, and management functions in ways that profoundly
improve data center performance, efficiency, and security. Providing powerful computing, and a
broad range of programmable acceleration engines in the I/O path, BlueField-3 is perfectly
positioned to address the infrastructure needs of the most demanding applications, while delivering
full software backward compatibility through the NVIDIA DOCA™ software framework.
BlueField-3 DPU Controllers are highly optimized for NVMe storage systems, Network Functions
Virtualization (NFV), Cloud and Machine Learning workloads. BlueField-3 integrates all the discrete
components of a storage system appliance into a single chip making it the premier solution for
building Just-a-Bunch-Of-Flash (JBOF) systems, All-Flash-Array and storage appliances for NVMe over
Fabrics. With an integrated NVMe-oF and NVMe/TCP offload accelerator, the BlueField-3 DPU
Controller has a superior performance advantage over existing JBOF systems, significantly reducing
storage transaction latency, while increasing IOPs (I/O operations per second).
1.1 System Requirements
Motherboard
In PCIe x16 Configuration
PCIe Gen 5.0 (32GT/s) through x16 edge connector.
In PCIe x16 Extension Option - Switch DSP (Data Stream Port)
PCIe Gen 5.0 SERDES @32GT/s through edge connector
PCIe Gen 5.0 SERDES @32GT/s through PCIe Auxiliary Connection
Card
System Power Supply
The maximum power consumption is up to 150W and is split between
the two power sources as follows:
Up to 66W from the PCIe golden fingers (12V)
The rest of the consumed power is drawn from a supplementary 8-
pin ATX power supply connector
Operating System
The BlueField-3 DPU Controller is shipped with Ubuntu – a Linux
commercial operating system – which includes the NVIDIA OFED stack
(MLNX_OFED), and is capable of running all customer-based Linux
applications seamlessly. For more information, please refer to the DOCA
SDK documentation or NVIDIA BlueField-3 Software User Manual.
Connectivity
Interoperable with 1/10/25/40/50/100/200 Gb/s Ethernet switches
and SDR/DDR/EDR/HDR100/HDR/NDR200 InfiniBand switches
Passive copper cable with ESD protection
Powered connectors for optical and active cable support
NOTE: The power cable is not included in the package. It
should be part of the system wiring or ordered separately as
an accessory.