NVIDIA announced the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU, its next-generation data processing unit, to deliver the most powerful software-defined networking, storage, and cybersecurity acceleration capabilities available for data centers.
The first DPU built for AI and accelerated computing, BlueField-3 lets every enterprise deliver applications at any scale with industry-leading performance and data center security. It is optimized for multi-tenant, cloud-native environments, offering software-defined, hardware-accelerated networking, storage, security, and management services at a data-center scale.
One BlueField-3 DPU delivers the equivalent data center services of up to 300 CPU cores, freeing up valuable CPU cycles to run business-critical applications.
BlueField-3 DPUs transform traditional infrastructure into “zero-trust” environments — in which every data center user is authenticated — by offloading and isolating data center infrastructure from business applications. This secures enterprises from cloud to core to edge while increasing efficiency and performance.
The industry’s first 400GbE/NDR DPU, BlueField-3 delivers unmatched 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.
BlueField-3 provides real-time network visibility, detection, and response for cyber threats and acts as the monitoring, or telemetry, agent for NVIDIA Morpheus, a state-of-the-art, AI-enabled, cloud-native cybersecurity platform.
BlueField-3 takes advantage of NVIDIA DOCA, the data-center-on-a-chip architecture that gives developers a complete, open software platform for building software-defined, hardware-accelerated networking, storage, security, and management applications running on BlueField DPUs.
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.
Leading server manufacturers Dell Technologies, Inspur, Lenovo, and Supermicro are integrating BlueField DPUs into their systems. Cloud service providers across the world are using BlueField DPUs to accelerate workloads, including Baidu, JD.com, and UCloud. The BlueField ecosystem is also expanding with BlueField-3 support from leading hybrid cloud platform partners Canonical, Red Hat, and VMware; cybersecurity leaders Fortinet, Guardicore, and storage providers DDN, NetApp, and WekaIO; and edge platform providers Cloudflare, F5, and Juniper Networks.
BlueField-3 is fully backward-compatible with BlueField-2, which provides unparalleled performance for offloading, accelerating, and isolating data center workloads. BlueField-2 is generally available with 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 is expected to sample in the first quarter of 2022.
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