NVIDIA DOCA Software Framework

Accelerate application development for the
NVIDIA BlueField DPU

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NVIDIA® DOCA™ is the key to unlocking the potential of the NVIDIA BlueField® data processing unit (DPU) to offload, accelerate, and isolate data center workloads. With DOCA, developers can program the data center infrastructure of tomorrow by creating software-defined, cloud-native, DPU-accelerated services with zero-trust protection to address the increasing performance and security demands of modern data centers.

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If you’re already a member of the DOCA early access program, get started here.

DOCA 1.3 Software


Together, DOCA and the BlueField DPU enable the development of applications that deliver breakthrough networking, security, and storage performance with a comprehensive, open development platform. BlueField isolates the infrastructure service domain from the workload domain to offer significant improvements in application and server performance, security, and efficiency, giving developers all the tools they need to realize the optimal, secure, accelerated data center.

DOCA software consists of an SDK and a runtime environment. The DOCA SDK provides industry-standard open APIs and frameworks, including Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for networking and security and the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) for storage. The frameworks simplify application offload with integrated NVIDIA acceleration packages. The DOCA-based services are exposed in the compute nodes as industry-standard input/output (IO) interfaces, enabling infrastructure virtualization and isolation.

The SDK supports a range of operating systems and distributions and includes drivers, libraries, tools, documentation, and example applications. The DOCA runtime includes tools for provisioning, deploying, and orchestrating containerized services on hundreds or thousands of DPUs across the data center.

Backward Compatibility

DOCA provides multi-generational support to offer developers the confidence that applications developed today will consistently run with added performance benefits on all future generations of BlueField.

Offload, Accelerate, Isolate Infrastructure

Network, storage and security services are offloaded, accelerated and isolated on the DPU while data is securely delivered to workloads at wire speed.

Open Ecosystem

DOCA offers a software application framework to accelerate ecosystem development.

Access DOCA documentation to view the SDK programming guides, API references, and more.

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SDK Key Components

  • Industry-standard APIs: DPDK, SPDK, P4, Linux Netlink
  • Network acceleration SDK: NVIDIA Accelerated Switching and Packet Processing (ASAP2)™ software-defined networking (SDN), emulated VirtIO, P4, 5T for 5G technology, Firefly time synchronization
  • Security acceleration SDK: inline cryptography, deep packet inspection
  • Storage acceleration SDK: storage emulation and virtualization, crypto and compression
  • Remote direct-memory access (RDMA) acceleration SDK: unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and Unified Communication X (UCX), RDMA verbs, GPUDirect®
  • Management SDK: deployment, provisioning, service orchestration
  • User space and kernel

BlueField DPU OS and Drivers

  • The BlueField OS includes the bootloader, OS kernel, necessary network interface card (NIC) firmware, NVIDIA drivers, sample filesystem, and toolchain—all certified as part of the NVIDIA NGC™ catalog.
  • Ubuntu Server 20.04 ships with NVIDIA BlueField DPUs as commercial-grade Linux distribution with continuous OS and security updates.
  • DOCA software is available on every leading operating system as a standalone package without a bundled OS for Arm® and x86 architectures.

DOCA News

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DOCA Ecosystem Partners

NVIDIA is working with leading platform vendors and partners to integrate and expand DOCA support for commercial distributions on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs.







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To experience DOCA today, register for early access.

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Resources

Introduction to DOCA for BlueField DPUs
 

Take this NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI) course to learn more about NVIDIA DOCA and how you can benefit from the NVIDIA BlueField DPU in your data center.


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Configure Host-Based Firewall with NVIDIA BlueField DPU

Watch this demo to learn how to apply a drop rule to the Bluefield DPU using NVIDIA DOCA software to allow initiated connections within the server to be established.


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NVIDIA Inception: Empowering the World’s Cutting-Edge Startups

Evolve your business faster with access to technology, training, funding opportunities, and more.


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Programming the Data Center of the Future Today with DOCA 1.2

Discover how the latest release of DOCA is enabling data center builders and innovators to meet the increasing demands for scale and performance, all while protecting data confidentiality.


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BlueField DPU Runtime and Driver Downloads

Download the BlueField DPU runtime image and drivers below.