Mellanox BlueField SmartNIC User Manual

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SMART ADAPTER CARDS

BlueField® SmartNIC for Ethernet

High Performance Ethernet Network Adapter Cards

Combining Arm® processing power with advanced network and storage offloads to accelerate a multitude of security, networking and storage applications with world-leading performance, flexibility and efficiency

BlueField SmartNIC features the BlueField I/O Processing Unit (IPU) — an innovative and high-

performance programmable networking engine. Providing unmatched scalability and efciency, the

dual-port BlueField SmartNIC is the ideal adapter to accelerate the most demanding workloads

in data center, cloud, service provider and storage environments. BlueField SmartNICs comes in different speeds, numbers of CPU cores and PCIe widths—from dual-port 25GbE PCIe Gen4 x8 to dual-port 100GbE PCIe Gen4 x16, supporting 4/8/16 Arm cores.

PRODUCT BRIEF

†

HIGHLIGHTS

– Intelligent programmable network

adapter

– Best-in-class hardware offloads with

Arm processing power

– Accelerates a wide range of security,

networking, storage and other workloads

Powerful & Smart Network Adapter

BlueField SmartNIC adapters accelerate a wide range of applications through exible data and control plane ofoading. Enabling a more efcient use of compute resources, BlueField adapters

empower the CPU to focus on running applications rather than on networking or security

processing. Additionally, as software-dened adapters, BlueField SmartNICs ensure the ultimate exibility by adapting to future protocols and features through simple software updates.

BlueField System-on-Chip

BlueField is a Mellanox family of advanced solutions that integrates a coherent mesh of 64-bit Armv8 A72 cores, a ConnectX network adapter front-end and a PCI Express switch into a single chip.

The powerful IPU architecture includes a 64-bit Armv8 multicore processor array and enables

customers to develop sophisticated applications and highly differentiated feature sets. BlueField

leverages the rich Arm software ecosystem and introduces the ability to ofoad the x86 software

stack.

At the heart of BlueField is the ConnectX-5 network controller with DMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) and InniBand ofoad technology, which delivers 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 ofoads and stateless protocols.

– Dedicated hardware offload for NVMe-

over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF)

– Dual-port 25GbE PCIe Gen4.0 x8

– Dual-port 100GbE PCIe Gen4.0 x16

– 8 or 16 Arm A72 cores, depending upon

model

– 4/8/16GB on-board DDR4 memory,

depending upon model

– Various form factors

– Standard embedded Linux software

stack

– Hardware-based security isolation

†

For illustration only. Actual products may vary.

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Mellanox BlueField Ethernet SmartNIC

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Security Applications

BlueField SmartNIC 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 exible control and visibility at the server and workload level, controlling risk at the server access layer. BlueField builds security into the DNA of the data center and enables prevention, detection and response to potential threats in

real time.

BlueField SmartNIC is capable of delivering powerful functionality, including encryption of data-in-motion, bare metal provisioning, stateful L4 rewall and more.

Networking Applications

BlueField SmartNIC offers a wide range of dedicated ofoads to maximize virtualization scalability and efciency. Data center administrators can benet from better server utilization, allowing more virtual machines and more tenants on the same hardware, while reducing the TCO, power, and cable complexity.

Among its accelerations:

• Mellanox ASAP2 - Accelerated Switching and Packet Processing® for Open vSwitch (OVS) delivers exible, highly efcient virtual

switching and routing capabilities. OVS accelerations can be further

enhanced using BlueField processing and memory. For example, the scale of OVS actions can be increased by utilizing BlueField internal memory, and more OVS actions and vSwitch/vRouter

implementations can be supported.

• Network overlay technology (VXLAN, NVGRE, Geneve) ofoad,

including encapsulation and decapsulation, allows the traditional ofoads to operate on the tunneled protocols and also ofoad Network Address Translation (NAT) routing capabilities.

Storage Applications

BlueField SmartNIC may operate as a co-processor ofoading specic storage tasks from the host, isolating part of the storage media from the host, or enabling abstraction of software-dened storage logic, using both a BlueField-dedicated hardware ofoad for NVMe-overFabrics and Arm cores.

Mellanox NVMe SNAP

NVMe SNAP (Software-dened Network Accelerated Processing) enables hardware virtualization of NVMe storage. The Mellanox NVMe SNAP framework enables customers to easily integrate

networked storage solutions into their cloud or enterprise server

deployments. NVMe SNAP brings virtualized storage to bare-metal clouds and makes composable storage simple, promoting CAPEX and OPEX savings. It enables the efcient disaggregation of compute and storage to allow fully-optimized resource utilization.

NVMe SNAP logically presents networked storage as a local NVMe

drive on the PCIe bus to host software. This allows the host OS/ Hypervisor to use a standard NVMe-driver instead of different network storage protocols.

NVMe SNAP empowers customers with the freedom to implement their own storage technology and solutions on top of the NVMe SNAP framework that runs on Mellanox BlueField™ embedded Arm cores

along with embedded hardware storage acceleration engines. This powerful combination is agile yet completely transparent to host

software, allowing NVMe SNAP to be integrated into almost any

storage solution.

NVMe SNAP is a licensed software available on select BlueField part numbers, see Table 1 and Table 2 for more information.

Software Support

BlueField SmartNIC is shipped with Mellanox BlueOS® but other operating systems, such as RH xx.xx and others, are also supported. BlueOS is a Linux reference distribution, which includes the Mellanox OFED stack, and is capable of running all customer-based Linux

applications seamlessly. BlueOS itself is based on the Yocto Project

Poky distribution. A PXE driver is also pre-installed.

The BlueField adapter execution environment is fully isolated from the x86 server and network environment, and can run the Open vSwitch Database (OVSDB) or other virtual switches to create a secure solution

for bare metal provisioning.

The software package also includes support for DPDK, and applications for encryption and a stateful L4-based rewall.

On the storage initiator side, BlueField SmartNICs can prove an efcient solution for hyperconverged systems to enable the host CPU

to focus on compute while all the storage and networking tasks are

handled through the NIC engine and Arm cores.

Decoupling of the storage tasks from the compute tasks also simplies the software model, enabling the deployment of multiple OS virtual machines while the storage application is handled solely by the Arm Linux subsystem.

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Mellanox BlueField Ethernet SmartNIC

Features

This section describes hardware features and capabilities. Please refer to the driver and rmware release notes for feature availability.

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NETWORK AND HOST INTERFACES

Network Interfaces – Dual-port SFP28 or two QSFP28 Ethernet ports

– Integrated PHYs seamlessly connect to all standard

copper and ber media

PCI Express Interface – 8 or 16 lanes of PCIe Gen 3.0/4.0 – Fall-back to 4, 2, or 1 lane

ARM/DDR SUBSYSTEM

Arm Cores – Armv8 A72 cores (64-bit) – Superscalar, variable-length, out-of-order pipeline

– Each core supports NEON™ 128b SIMD execution

unit

– Arm VFPv4 single and double precision oating

point acceleration (IEEE 754)

– Per core 48KB I-cache and 32KB D-cache

– Cache coherent mesh interconnect of CPUs, I/O and

memory – each tile contains 2 cores and 1 MB L2 cache

– 6 MB L3 cache, sophisticated eviction policies

On-board Memory – Single channel 4/8/16GB DDR4 DRAM with ECC

HARDWARE ACCELERATIONS

Encryption Acceleration

– Armv8 cryptography extensions:

A64, A32, and T32 instructions for:

• AES, SHA-1, SHA-224, and SHA-256

• Finite eld arithmetic sed in algorithms such as

Galois/Counter Mode and Elliptic Curve

– Hardware Public Key Accelerator

• RSA, Dife-Hellman, DSA, ECC, EC-DSA, EC-DH

– True Random Number Generator with entropy

source

Enhanced Features – PeerDirect RDMA (aka GPUDirect) communication

acceleration

– Enhanced Atomic operations – Registration-free RDMA memory access – NVMe-over-Fabric hardware acceleration

Transport Ofoads

– RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)

– TCP/UDP/IP stateless ofoad – LSO, LRO, checksum ofoad – RSS (also on encapsulated packets), TSS, HDS,

VLAN insertion/stripping, Receive Flow Steering

– Intelligent interrupt coalescence – TCP/UDP, MPLS, VxLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE – SRP, iSER, NFS RDMA, SMB Direct, NVMe-oF

Hardware-based I/O Virtualization – SR-IOV – Multi-function per port – Multiple queues per virtual machine Management and Control – SDN management interface for managing the

eSwitch

– eMMC memory controllers

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLCHAIN

– Native and cross-compile GNU toolchain

– Performance analysis and proling tools – Compatible with Arm DS-5 and other commercial

development and proling tools

SOFTWARE SUPPORT

Arm Environment

– BlueOS: Commercial grade Yocto-based Arm Linux

distribution – Commercial Linux distributions supported – Delivered with OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution

(OFED)

– Arm-optimized versions of all Mellanox drivers and

software stack – Accelerated NVMe over Fabrics target stack – Optimized Arm DPDK and ConnectX PMD – NVMe SNAP framework (license required)

Connected Host (Network Adapter Environment)

– Linux

– Windows – FreeBSD – VMware – OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) – OpenFabrics Windows Distribution (WinOF-2)

Table 1 - Part Numbers and Feature Set Breakdown

OPN

MBF1M332A-ASNAT 25GbE 2 x SFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x8

MBF1M332A-ASCAT 25GbE 2 x SFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x8 Crypto enabled 16GB on-board

MBF1M322A-ASNAT 25GbE 2 x SFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x8 Crypto disabled 8GB on-board

MBF1L516A-CSNAT 100GbE 2 x QSFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x16 Crypto disabled 16GB on-board

MBF1L516A-CSCAT 100GbE 2 x QSFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x16 Crypto enabled 16GB on-board

MBF1M332A-AENAT 25GbE 2 x SFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x8

MBF1M332A-AECAT 25GbE 2 x SFP28 Gen3.0/4.0 x8 Crypto enabled 16GB on-board

* Note: Secure boot is not supported on these SmartNIC models, please contact Mellanox for additional information.

Max. Speed No. of Ports PCIe Support Cores NVMe SNAP™ Crypto* DDR Memory Form Factor

Crypto disabled 16GB on-board

G-Series 16 Cores

G-Series

8 Cores

Optional

License

(Table 2)

Crypto disabled 16GB on-board

Table 2 - NVMe SNAP License (sold separately)

OPN

BF1-NVMESNAP-BNS-1 One perpetual license to use NVMe SNAP on one BlueField adapter. Includes Mellanox Technical Support and Warranty - Silver, 1 Year.

© Copyright 2019. Mellanox Technologies. All rights reserved. Mellanox, Mellanox logo, BlueField, BlueOS, ConnectX, ASAP2 - Accelerated Switching and Packet Processing, GPUDirect and Mellanox PeerDirect are registered trademarks of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. NVMe SNAP is a trademark of Mellanox Technologies. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Description

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www.mellanox.com

Support

For information about Mellanox support packages, please contact your Mellanox Technologies sales representative or

visit our Support Index page.

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