Hands on with SmartNICs

ACM SIGCOMM 2026

Programming SmartNICs: From Packet Processing to Programmable Transport

Francisco Pereira

Bilal Saleem

Tyler Liu

Chenxingyu Zhao

Let’s get you onto a BlueField‑3

Group	Node Address	Group	Node Address
1	bf3-ulisbon-1.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	7	bf3-nvidia-4.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/
2	bf3-ulisbon-2.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	8	bf3-cards.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/umich-1/
3	bf3-ulisbon-3.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	9	bf3-cards.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/umich-2/
4	bf3-nvidia-1.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	10	bf3-uwashington-1.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/
5	bf3-nvidia-2.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	11	bf3-uwashington-2.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/
6	bf3-nvidia-3.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/	12	bf3-uwaterloo-1.tail4f7fd9.ts.net/

Password Smartnics-Roce-@-Sigcomm

Part 1

Mark ECN

Packet Processing

eSwitch · hardware pipeline

Part 2

Congestion Control

Programmable Transport

DPA · programmable cores

Part 1 creates the congestion signal. Part 2 reacts to it.

Part 1

Mark ECN

The guide on the node

doca-flow.pdf

Part 1 · Mark ECN — what you should see

Part 2

Congestion Control

The guide on the node

doca-pcc.pdf

Part 2 · Congestion Control — what you should see

Bonus

Steering

PCC detects and controls congestion per path.
By combining its congestion feedback with DOCA Flow,
we can perform congestion-aware traffic steering across multiple paths.

The guide on the node

pcc-path-steering.pdf

Bonus · Steering — what you should see