Datasheet
NVIDIA BlueField-3
Networking Platform
The 400Gb/s infrastructure compute platform for
powering the world’s data centers.
The NVIDIA® BlueField®-3 networking platform is designed to accelerate data center
infrastructure workloads and usher in the era of accelerated computing and AI. Portfolio
Supporting both Ethernet and InfiniBand connectivity, BlueField-3 offers speeds up
> 1 or 2 ports with up to 400Gb/s
to 400 gigabits per second (Gb/s). It combines powerful computing with software-
connectivity
defined hardware accelerators for networking, storage, and cybersecurity—all fully
programmable through the NVIDIA DOCA™ software framework. Drawing on the > 32GB on-board DDR5 memory
platform’s robust capabilities, BlueField data processing units (DPUs) and BlueField > Form factors: HHHL, FHHL
SuperNICs revolutionize traditional computing environments, transforming them
into secure, high-performance, efficient, and sustainable data centers suitable for > 1GbE out-of-band
any workload at any scale. management port
The BlueField-3 DPU is a cloud infrastructure processor that empowers > Integrated BMC
organizations to build software-defined, hardware-accelerated data centers from
the cloud to the edge. BlueField-3 DPUs offload, accelerate, and isolate software-
defined networking, storage, security, and management functions, significantly
enhancing data center performance, efficiency, and security. By decoupling data
center infrastructure from business applications, BlueField-3 creates a secure, zero-
trust data center infrastructure, streamlines operations, and reduces the total cost
of ownership.
The BlueField-3 SuperNIC is a novel class of network accelerator that’s purpose-
built for supercharging hyperscale AI workloads. Designed for network-intensive,
massively parallel computing, the BlueField-3 SuperNIC provides best-in-class remote
direct-memory access over converged Ethernet (RoCE) network connectivity between
GPU servers at up to 400Gb/s, optimizing peak AI workload efficiency. For modern
AI clouds, the BlueField-3 SuperNIC enables secure multi-tenancy while ensuring
deterministic performance and performance isolation between tenant jobs.
Key Software-Defined, Hardware-Accelerated Applications
Cloud Networking Storage Security HPC / AI Telco and Edge
Cloud overlay, SDN NVMe™ over Fabrics (NVMe- Distributed next-generation AI cloud, secure multi- Cloud RAN, virtualized
acceleration, NAT, load oF ™), NVMe/TCP™, elastic firewall, root of trust, micro- tenancy, cloud-native edge gateways, VNF
balancer, NFV, video storage, hyper converged segmentation, DDOS prevention supercomputing, acceleration, edge
streaming infrastructure (HCI) communication microservers
acceleration
Features
Network and Host Interfaces > On-board flash encryption > Programmable congestion control
> Device attestation (PCC)
Network Interfaces
> Functional isolation layer > Stateless TCP offloads
> 1 or 2 ports with up to 400Gb/s
> IPsec/TLS/MACSec 128/256bit HPC/AI Accelerations
Ethernet or NDR InfiniBand
data-in-motion encryption
connectivity > HPC / AI All-to-All engine
> PSP security protocol (PSP)
> NVIDIA GPUDirect
PCI Express Interface > AES-GCM 128/256bit key
> NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage (GDS)
> 32 lanes of PCIe Gen 5.0 > AES-XTS 256/512bit data-at-rest
> HPC MPI Tag Matching
> Flexible PCIe switch supporting self- encryption
hosting and server-hosting > Connection tracking for statefull Advanced Timing and
Synchronization
firewall
Compute and Memory > Public key accelerator (PKA) > IEEE 1588v2 (any profile)
> True random number generator > PTP hardware clock (PHC)
Arm CPU Cores
(TRNG) > Line rate hardware timestamp
> Up to 16 Armv8.2+ A78 Hercules cores
> Time triggered scheduling
> 8MB L2 cache Storage
> Time-based SDN acceleration
> 16MB LLC system cache > BlueField SNAP - Elastic block storage
- NVMe™ and VirtIO-blk Boot Options
Programmable Datapath
Accelerator > NVMe-oF™ and NVMe/TCP™ > Secure boot (RSA authenticated)
acceleration > Remote boot over Ethernet
> 16 cores, 256 threads
> Decompression engine > Remote boot over iSCSI
> Programmability through DOCA
> Erasure coding for RAID > PXE and UEFI
> Heavy multi-threading applications
implementation
acceleration Management
Networking
DDR and SSD Support > Integrated BMC
> RoCE, Zero Touch RoCE > 1GbE out-of-band management port
> Dual DDR5 5600MT/s DRAM
> ASAP² - Accelerated Switch and > NC-SI, MCTP over SMBus, and MCTP
controllers
Packet Processing® for SDN and VNF over PCIe
> 32GB on-board DDR5
acceleration
> ECC error protection support > PLDM for Monitor and Control
> Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) DSP0248
> 128GB on-board SSD
> VirtIO acceleration > PLDM for Firmware Update DSP026
> Overlay network acceleration > I2C interface for device control and
Hardware Accelerations
> VXLAN, Geneve, NVGRE configuration
Security > Programmable flexible parser: > SPI interface to flash
> Platform security user-defined classification > eMMC for storing the system’s BIOS
> Secure boot with hardware root-of- > Connection tracking (L4 firewall) > UART debug interface
trust > Flow mirroring, sampling and > USB connector to load operating
> Secure firmware update statistics system images
Ready to Get Started?
For ordering information, please contact your NVIDIA sales
representative or visit the NVIDIA BlueField-3 User Guide
To learn more about the NVIDIA BlueField Networking
Platform, visit nvidia.com/dpu
© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation and affiliates. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, BlueField, DOCA, and
NVLink are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation and affiliates in the U.S. and other
countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective owners with which they are
associated. 2955282. Nov23
