You met DOCA as "the framework Check Point builds on." Now look inside: DOCA is a layered SDK — one foundation, many libraries, ready-made services on top. Get the layers and everything else has a home.
In the BlueField track you learned DOCA is "the CUDA for DPUs." This track opens it up. The first win is the simplest and most durable: DOCA's four layers, and where your code sits among them.docs
DOCA is built on DOCA Core, a unified foundation for the DOCA Libraries, which are packaged into ready-to-run Services and Applications — with the DPA subsystem for offloading code onto the BlueField-3 datapath processor.core
| Layer | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| DOCA Core | The unified foundation: discover devices, register memory (zero-copy), submit async tasks, poll a progress engine. Same API on DPU or host.core |
| DOCA Libraries | The capabilities — packet steering (Flow), RDMA, GPU networking (GPUNetIO), DMA, compression, host introspection (App Shield), and more. You call these. |
| Services / Apps / Tools | Ready-made building blocks: containerized DOCA services, reference applications + samples to copy, and CLI tools. |
| DPA subsystem | Offload communication-centric code onto the datapath processor on BlueField-3 (DPU-only).dpa |
DOCA Core has the same API on BlueField and on a plain host — but a call
returns DOCA_ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED where the hardware can't do it.core That single design choice is
exactly why "can I run DOCA without a DPU?" has a nuanced answer — hold that thought.
NVIDIA's DOCA SDK Architecture page and the DOCA Overview. Match their diagram to the four layers above.