At OCP 2026, we saw the new NVIDIA BlueField-4 STX Server for Context Memory (CMX). Partners had been asking for this, and NVIDIA delivered. Onboard, we have a lower-cost design than the dual-Vera setup we saw previously. Let us take a look at the new board.
For context, this is the previously shown BlueField-4 DPU. That one, pictured below, is a dual Vera CPU setup, each with SOCAMM memory, plus four ConnectX-9 SuperNICs. NVIDIA calls this a DPU, but it is clearly more costly than a BlueField-1 or BlueField-3, which are much smaller and lower-power devices. For partners looking at building storage platforms, the below is more akin to a dual CPU server than a traditional DPU.
At OCP 2026, multiple partners showed off the BlueField-4 STX server for context memory (CMX). Here is the much smaller card, which still uses high-density connectors for PCIe and system connectivity.
NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs encompass both NVIDIA Grace and Vera CPU cores, but this one looks like a Vera package. That is a very substantial CPU. To be clear, this is not like the embedded-class CPUs that we typically have seen in DPUs previously. This is more like having a high-end single-socket server platform.
Another interesting feature is that the boards at OCP 2026 are using SOCAMM memory, so these should be relatively easy to put either a heatsink or a liquid cooling block on top of it.
Onboard, there is an M.2 slot. Usually these are for OS drives, but if you saw our recent Inside the Secretive AWS Networking Lab, the M.2 SSDs there are being used for log devices.
This may seem like a small feature, but it means NVIDIA designed this less like a traditional motherboard replacement and more like something that is easy to assemble automatically.
Something that may not immediately hit you if you are looking at photos is just the size of this board. A soldered CPU and LPDDR5X here, over traditional DDR5 DIMM slots, give NVIDIA a platform where the “motherboard” is roughly the size of an Intel DMR 16-channel socket or a 16-channel AMD EPYC Venice platform.
Final Words
This is just a neat platform. It almost feels like NVIDIA needs some brand between the Vera server line and the traditional BlueField DPU line. Something notable that we did not see on the boards shown at OCP 2026, or at least in our photos of them from various booths, is an NVIDIA ConnectX-9 SuperNIC. We expected that, but did not see it on this board. For context memory platforms, a single Vera versus a dual Vera makes this a lower-cost platform, and that will likely help the STX/ CMX systems come to market as the price of NAND has been rising meaningfully over the past year.