Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx User Manual

NVIDIA MELLANOX CONNECTX-6 DX

ETHERNET SMARTNIC

NVIDIA® Mellanox® ConnectX®-6 Dx SmartNIC is the industry’s most secure and advanced
cloud network interface card to accelerate mission-critical data-center applications,
such as security, virtualization, SDN/NFV, big data, machine learning, and storage. The
SmartNIC provides up to two ports of 100 Gb/s or a single-port of 200 Gb/s Ethernet
connectivity and delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) of any smart network
interface card.

ConnectX-6 Dx is a member of NVIDIA Mellanox’s world-class, award-winning ConnectX
series of network adapters powered by leading 50 Gb/s (PAM4) and 25/10 Gb/s (NRZ)
SerDes technology and novel capabilities that accelerate cloud and data-center payloads.

SECURITY FROM ZERO TRUST TO HERO TRUST

In an era where privacy of information is key and zero trust is the rule, ConnectX-6 Dx
adapters offer a range of advanced built-in capabilities that bring security down to the
endpoints with unprecedented performance and scalability, including:

> Crypto – IPsec and TLS data-in-motion inline encryption and decryption offload, and

AES-XTS block-level data-at-rest encryption and decryption offload.

> Probes & DoS Attack Protection – ConnectX-6 Dx enables a hardware-based L4 firewall

by offloading stateful connection tracking through Mellanox ASAP
and Packet Processing

®

.

2

- Accelerated Switch

> NIC Security – Hardware Root-of-Trust (RoT) Secure Boot and secure firmware update

using RSA cryptography, and cloning-protection, via a device-unique secret key.

ADVANCED VIRTUALIZATION

ConnectX-6 Dx delivers another level of innovation to enable building highly efficient
virtualized cloud data centers:

> Virtualization – Mellanox ASAP

delivers orders of magnitude higher performance vs. software-based solutions.
ConnectX-6 Dx ASAP

2

offers both SR-IOV and VirtIO in-hardware offload capabilities,

and supports up to 8 million rules.

> Advanced Quality of Service – Includes traffic shaping and classification-based

data policing.

2

technology for vSwitch/vRouter hardware offload

SmartNIC Portfolio

> 1/10/25/40/50/100/200 Gb/s Ethernet,

PAM4 /NRZ

> Various form factors:

> PCIe low-profile
> OCP 3.0 Small Form Factor (SFF)
> OCP 2.0

> Connectivity options:

> SFP28, SFP56, QSFP28, QSFP56,

DSFP

> PCIe Gen 3.0/4.0 x16 host interface
> Multi-host and single-host flavors
> Cr ypto and non-crypto versions

Key Features

> Up to 200 Gb/s bandwidth
> Message rate of up to 215 Mpps
> Sub 0.8 usec latency
> Flexible programmable pipeline for new

network flows

> Mellanox Multi-Host with advanced QoS

2

- Accelerated Switching and Packet

> ASAP

Processing for virtual switches/routers

> Overlay tunneling technologies
> IPsec and TLS in-line cr ypto acceleration
> Block crypto acceleration for data-at-rest
> Hardware Root-of-Trust and secure

firmware update

> Connection Tracking offload
> Advanced RoCE capabilities
> Best in class PTP for TSN applications
> GPUDirect

communication

> Host chaining technology for economical

rack design

> Platform agnostic: x86, Power, Arm
> ODCC compatible

®

for GPU-to-GPU

NVIDIA MELLANOX CONNECTX6 DX | PRODUCT BRIEF | AUG20 | 1

INDUSTRYLEADING ROCE

Following the Mellanox ConnectX tradition of industry-leading RoCE capabilities,
ConnectX-6 Dx adds another layer of innovation to enable more scalable, resilient and
easy-to-deploy RoCE solutions.

> Zero Touch RoCE – Simplifying RoCE deployments, ConnectX-6 Dx allows RoCE

payloads to run seamlessly on existing networks without requiring special configuration
on the network (no PFC, no ECN). New features in ConnectX-6 Dx ensure resiliency and
efficiency at scale of such deployments.

> Configurable Congestion Control – API to build user-defined congestion control

algorithms, best serving various environments and RoCE and TCP/IP traffic patterns.

BESTINCLASS PTP FOR TIME SENSITIVE APPLICATIONS

Mellanox offers a full IEEE 1588v2 PTP software solution as well as time sensitive related
features called 5T45G. Mellanox PTP and 5T45G software solutions are designed to meet
the most demanding PTP profiles. ConnectX-6 Dx incorporates an integrated Hardware
Clock (PHC) that allows the device to achieve sub-20 usec accuracy while offering
various timing related functions, including time-triggered scheduling or time-based SND
accelerations (time based ASAP²). Furthermore, 5T45G technology enables software
applications to transmit front-haul (ORAN) compatible in high bandwidth. The PTP solution
supports slave clock, master clock, and boundary clock.

Selected ConectX-6 Dx SmartNICs provide PPS-Out or PPS-In signals from designated
SMA connectors.

Solutions

> Cloud-native, Web 2.0, hyperscale
> Enterprise data-centers
> Cyber security
> Big data analytics
> Scale-out compute and storage

infrastructure

> Telco and Network Function

Virtualization (NFV)

> Cloud storage
> Machine Learning (ML) & Artificial

Intelligence (AI)

> Media and Entertainment

EFFICIENT STORAGE SOLUTIONS

With its NVMe-oF target and initiator offloads, ConnectX-6 Dx brings further optimization
to NVMe-oF, enhancing CPU utilization and scalability. Additionally, ConnectX-6 Dx
supports hardware offload for ingress/egress of T10-DIF/PI/CRC32/CRC64 signatures, as
well as AES-XTS encryption/decryption offload enabling user-based key management and
a one-time-FIPS-certification approach.

WIDE SELECTION OF NICS

ConnectX-6 Dx SmartNICs are available in several form factors including low-profile PCIe,
OCP2.0 and OCP3.0 cards, with various network connector types (SFP28/56, QSFP28/56,
or DSFP). The ConnectX-6 Dx portfolio also provides options for Mellanox Multi-Host
Mellanox Socket Direct

Mellanox Multi-Host

®

configurations.

®

connects multiple compute or storage hosts to a single interconnect
adapter and enables designing and building new scale-out compute and storage racks.
This enables better power and performance management, while reducing capital and
operational expenses.

Mellanox Socket Direct

®

technology brings improved performance to multi-socket servers,
by enabling each CPU in a multi-socket server to directly connect to the network through
its dedicated PCIe interface. This enables data to bypass the QPI (UPI) and the other CPU,
improving latency, performance and CPU utilization.

®

and

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