NVIDIA outlined a roadmap for the next two generations of its BlueField data processing unit (DPU) chips.
The current generation, BlueField-2, is now shipping and features dual 100Gb/s Ethernet or InfiniBand network ports and up to eight Arm cores. The BlueField-2 DPU includes accelerators for software-defined storage, networking, security, streaming, line rate TLS/IPSEC cryptography, precision timing for 5G telco and time-synchronized data centers and other cloud infrastructure services.
BlueField-3, which is expected to sample in the first quarter of 2022, will deliver 400GbE/NDR networking performance. It features 10x the accelerated compute power of the previous generation, with 16x Arm A78 cores and 4x the acceleration for cryptography. BlueField-3 is also the first DPU to support fifth-generation PCIe and offer time-synchronized data center acceleration. The company says BlueField-3 will enable real-time network visibility, detection and response for cyber threats and acts as the monitoring, or telemetry, agent for NVIDIA Morpheus, an AI-enabled, cloud-native cybersecurity platform, also announced today.
BlueField-3 takes advantage of NVIDIA DOCA, NVIDIA'S new data-center-on-a-chip software platform for building software-defined, hardware-accelerated networking, storage, security and management applications running on BlueField DPUs. Released today and available for download, DOCA includes a runtime environment to create, compile and optimize applications for the BlueField DPU; orchestration tools to provision, update and monitor thousands of DPUs across the data center; as well as libraries, APIs and a growing number of applications, such as deep packet inspection and load balancing.
BlueField-4 was shown on a slide with a projected 2024 horizon. It is expected to scale to 800GbE performance.
“Modern hyperscale clouds are driving a fundamental new architecture for data centers,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “A new type of processor, designed to process data center infrastructure software, is needed to offload and accelerate the tremendous compute load of virtualization, networking, storage, security and other cloud-native AI services. The time for BlueField DPU has come.”
“Red Hat continues to collaborate with NVIDIA as part of an open ecosystem that accelerates innovation while providing access to the latest hardware innovations for composable infrastructure,” said Chris Wright, chief technology officer of Red Hat. “We recognize the need to develop advanced solutions for network security and automation and are excited to support BlueField DPUs and the NVIDIA Morpheus AI framework via Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, industry-leading containers and Kubernetes-powered hybrid cloud platform.”
“Our mutual customers are racing to harness the power of AI for enterprise applications,” said Lee Caswell, vice president of marketing for the Cloud Platform Business Unit at VMware. “The vision of enterprise infrastructure powered by the VMware Cloud Foundation and to be certified with the newly announced NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU shows customers a path to improved application performance, a consistent operating model across virtualized and bare-metal environments, along with a new model for delivering zero-trust security without compromising performance.”
NVIDIA also disclosed that it is using its BlueField DPUs to accelerate its GeForce Now online gaming service.
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