Nvidia BlueField
Nvidia BlueField is a line of data processing units (DPUs) designed and produced by Nvidia. Initially developed by Mellanox Technologies, the BlueField IP was acquired by Nvidia in March 2019, when Nvidia acquired Mellanox Technologies for US$6.9 billion.[1] The first Nvidia produced BlueField cards, named BlueField-2, were shipped for review shortly after their announcement at VMworld 2019, and were officially launched at GTC 2020.[2] Also launched at GTC 2020 was the Nvidia BlueField-2X, an Nvidia BlueField card with an Ampere generation graphics processing unit (GPU) integrated onto the same card.[2] BlueField-3 and BlueField-4 DPUs were first announced at GTC 2021, with the tentative launch dates for these cards being 2022 and 2024 respectively.[3]
Nvidia BlueField cards are targeted for use in datacenters and high performance computing, where latency and bandwidth are important for efficient computation.[4]
BlueField cards differ from
The Bluefield X cards are DPU-GPU hybrid cards with a 100 class
Models
Model | Announcement Date | Release Date | Networking Port Options | Bandwidth Capacity | Cores | Core Type | PCIe Generation | Memory Capacity | Memory Type | GPU Accelerator | SPECint(2k17-rate)[7] | TOPS[7] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BlueField-2 | October 5, 2020 | Q2 2021 | Dual QSFP56 10/25/50/100 Gb
Single QSFP56 200 Gb |
200Gbit/s | 8 | ARM A72 | 4.0 | 16/32 GB | DDR4 | N/A | 9 | 0.7 |
BlueField-2X | Q4 2021 | Nvidia A100 | 60 | |||||||||
BlueField-3 | April 12, 2021 | Q1 2022 | Quad/Dual/Single QSFP56 | 400Gbit/s | 16 | ARM A78 | 5.0 | 64 GB | DDR5 | N/A | 42 | 1.5 |
BlueField-3X | N/A | Nvidia A100 | 75 | |||||||||
BlueField-4 | 2024 | OSFP112 | 800Gbit/s | TBD | TBD | 160 | 400 |
H100 CNX & A100 EGX
The H100 CNX and the A100 EGX are NIC/GPU hybrid cards and, while visually similar to a Bluefield-X card, are completely distinct, and do not have the Bluefield system on a chip integration. The cards are instead equipped with a generic ConnectX network interface controller.[8][9]
References
- ^ Clifford, Tyler (2020-04-28). "Nvidia completes 'homerun deal' after closing $7 billion acquisition of Mellanox". CNBC. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
- ^ a b servethehome (2020-10-05). "NVIDIA BlueField-2 and BlueField-2X DPU Offerings Launched". ServeTheHome. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
- ^ Shilov, Anton (2021-04-12). "Nvidia Reveals BlueField-3, BlueField-4 DPUs: 400-800 Gbps, 22-64B Transistors". Tom's Hardware.
- ^ "NVIDIA BLUEFIELD-2 DPU - Data Center Infrastructure on a Chip" (PDF). Nvidia.
- ^ servethehome (2021-05-29). "DPU vs SmartNIC and the STH NIC Continuum Framework". ServeTheHome. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
- ^ servethehome (2021-07-11). "CPU-GPU-NIC PCIe Card Realized with NVIDIA BlueField-2 A100". ServeTheHome. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
- ^ a b Mellor, Chris (2021-04-12). "Nvidia unveils BlueField 3 DPU. It's much faster". Blocks and Files. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
- ^ servethehome (2020-05-14). "NVIDIA EGX A100 Launched Tesla Plus Mellanox Vision". ServeTheHome. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
- ^ "NVIDIA H100 CNX". NVIDIA. Retrieved 2022-03-29.