Power consumption

Infrastructure & Networking Software And Drivers SoC And SmartNIC
1

Hi,

I am having some power-related issues at my server hosting 2 Bluefields. Both of my Bluefield-2 DPUs are E-series, meaning they get power only through the PCIe slot. The server has two PSUs but since it is a NUMA architecture and also hosts an NVIDIA A100 :), when I connect the Bluefields with one cable, everything is fine. But when both ports are connected, I see dmesg messages about the current drawn dropped to 27W or something like that.

Anyway, I was thinking that switching the mode of operation of one of the Bluefield back to SEPARATED_HOST mode might reduce the power consumption as the ARM cores do not need to handle packets.

  1. Would this be the case?

The other question i have is whether there is any tool to measure the power consumption of the Bluefield('s PCIe slot)?
Currently, I am using ipmitool to see some general consumption stats, but they are not really reliable/accurte.

Thanks

2

The FHHL P-Series DPUs with x16 PCIe Gen 4 lanes incorporate an external 12V power connection through a 6-pin ATX connector. You can use that.

3

As mentioned, I have E-series. They do not have the 6-pin ATX connectors :(