Doca Aes Gcm

DOCA AES-GCM

Where to start: This skill assumes DOCA is already installed and

the user is doing hands-on AES-GCM-acceleration work on a

BlueField / ConnectX / host with DOCA. Open TASKS.md if

the user wants to *do* something (configure / build / modify / run /

test / debug); open CAPABILITIES.md when the

question is *what can DOCA AES-GCM express* on this version. If the

user has not installed DOCA yet, route to

doca-setup first. If the user is

asking *"should I even use the accelerator for this encryption?"*,

the path-selection rule in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes

is the first stop. If the user is treating AES-GCM as a confidentiality-only

primitive (raw AES-CTR / AES-CBC style), stop and read the AEAD note

in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy

first — AES-GCM is authenticated encryption, and confusing the two is

the most expensive failure mode this skill exists to prevent.

Example questions this skill answers well

The CLASSES of DOCA AES-GCM questions this skill is built to answer,

each with one worked example. The agent should treat the *class* as

the load-bearing piece — the worked example is a single instance.

• **"Should I offload this AES-GCM encryption to DOCA AES-GCM, or

just do it on the CPU with OpenSSL?"** — worked example: *"I am

encrypting 4 KiB TLS records at line rate; is doca-aes-gcm worth

the setup vs OpenSSL EVP_aes_256_gcm on the CPU?"*. Answered by

the path-selection table in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes

+ the *"when NOT to use doca-aes-gcm"* bullets in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy.

• "Does my device support the AES-GCM key size I want?" — worked

example: *"is AES-256-GCM in the accelerator on this BlueField?

And while we're here, is AES-192-GCM available?"* (Answer: the

library exposes only DOCA_AES_GCM_KEY_128 / DOCA_AES_GCM_KEY_256;

AES-192 is not in the enum and is not supported. For the two

real key types, gate on

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_encrypt_is_key_type_supported(devinfo, key_type)

and the matching _decrypt_is_key_type_supported. AES-192 is

not available — route to a CPU library.) Answered by the

per-key-type capability queries and the per-task

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_*_is_supported queries in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes

+ the discovery step in

TASKS.md ## configure.

• **"How do I correctly decrypt an AES-GCM message and verify the

auth tag?"** — worked example: *"my doca_aes_gcm_task_decrypt

completion reports an error — is the plaintext output safe to

use?"*. Answered by the auth-tag verification rule in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy

(*do not use the plaintext if the auth tag did not verify*) +

the decrypt completion-handling workflow in

TASKS.md ## test and

TASKS.md ## debug.

• "What permissions does the source / destination mmap need?" —

worked example: *"my doca_aes_gcm_task_encrypt returns

DOCA_ERROR_NOT_PERMITTED"*. Answered by the permission matrix

in CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy

+ the mmap-set-permissions checklist in

TASKS.md ## test.

• **"Is this DOCA AES-GCM API available on my installed DOCA

version?"** — worked example: *"is AES-192-GCM in the DOCA I have

installed, on this device?"*. Answered by the version-compatibility

overlay in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Version compatibility,

which cross-links the canonical detection chain in

doca-version and adds the

AES-GCM-specific *"discover key sizes via cap query"* bullets.

• **"What does this DOCA_ERROR_* from an AES-GCM call mean and

which layer caused it?"** — worked example: *"DOCA_ERROR_IO_FAILED

on the decrypt completion — is this a hardware bug or a tag

mismatch?"*. Answered by the AES-GCM overlay on the cross-library

taxonomy in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Error taxonomy

+ the layered ladder in

TASKS.md ## debug that escalates to

doca-debug.

Audience

This skill serves **external developers building applications that

consume the DOCA AES-GCM library** — i.e., users whose code calls

doca_aes_gcm_* (directly in C/C++, or through FFI/bindings from

another language) to offload AES-GCM authenticated encryption /

decryption onto a BlueField DPU or ConnectX accelerator. It is *not*

for NVIDIA developers contributing to DOCA AES-GCM itself.

Language scope. DOCA AES-GCM ships as a C library with

pkg-config module name doca-aes-gcm. The shipped samples are

written in C. C and C++ consumers are the canonical case and the

worked examples in TASKS.md assume that path. Other-language

consumers (Rust, Go, Python, …) consume the same *.so through FFI

or language-specific bindings; the skill's contribution in that case

is to keep the lifecycle, capability-discovery, permission,

error-taxonomy, AEAD-semantics, and encrypt-vs-decrypt guidance

language-neutral, and to route the agent to the public C ABI as the

authoritative surface that any wrapper will eventually call.

Key handling is out of scope. This skill teaches the agent how to

*use* the DOCA AES-GCM library; it does not teach the user how to

generate, store, rotate, or distribute AES-GCM keys. Key-management

is the user's responsibility (a KMS, an HSM, a sealed file, an env

var the user trusts). The skill's only key-handling rule is the

operational one in

CAPABILITIES.md ## Safety policy:

do not log keys, do not commit them to source, and treat any key

buffer the program holds as sensitive memory.

When to load this skill

Load this skill when the user is doing hands-on DOCA AES-GCM work,

in any language. Concretely:

• Initializing a doca_aes_gcm context on a doca_dev and

configuring at least one task type (doca_aes_gcm_task_encrypt

and/or doca_aes_gcm_task_decrypt) before doca_ctx_start().

• Choosing between encrypt (doca_aes_gcm_task_encrypt —

takes key + IV + AAD + plaintext, produces ciphertext + auth

tag) and decrypt (doca_aes_gcm_task_decrypt — takes key +

IV + AAD + ciphertext + expected auth tag, produces plaintext

*and verifies the tag*) for the user's data shape.

• Setting permissions on doca_mmap correctly for the source buffer

(DOCA_ACCESS_FLAG_LOCAL_READ_ONLY at minimum — the plaintext on

encrypt or the ciphertext on decrypt) and the destination buffer

(DOCA_ACCESS_FLAG_LOCAL_READ_WRITE).

• Checking which AES-GCM key types (DOCA_AES_GCM_KEY_128 /

DOCA_AES_GCM_KEY_256 — AES-192 is not in the library) the

active device's accelerator advertises via

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_encrypt_is_key_type_supported /

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_decrypt_is_key_type_supported, and which task types via

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_encrypt_is_supported /

_task_decrypt_is_supported.

• Sizing the per-submission plaintext against

doca_aes_gcm_cap_task_encrypt_get_max_buf_size(devinfo).

• Validating an encrypt + decrypt round-trip against a published

AES-GCM test vector (NIST GCMVS, or RFC 5288 examples) before

pushing any user data through the accelerator.

• Handling the auth-tag verification result on decrypt completions

*as a security-critical signal* — a tag-mismatch completion means

the ciphertext was tampered with or corrupted, and the plaintext

output of that task is poisoned and must not be consumed.

• Debugging a DOCA_ERROR_* returned from an AES-GCM call

(lifecycle vs. unsupported key size vs. permission vs. tag

verification failure on decrypt) and the task-completion event on

the progress engine.

• Designing or extending non-C bindings (Rust, Go, Python, …) that

wrap the AES-GCM C ABI — for the lifecycle, permission,

capability, AEAD-semantics, and encrypt-vs-decrypt rules the

wrapper must honor.

Do not load this skill for general DOCA orientation, install of

DOCA itself, AES modes that are not GCM (CBC / CTR / XTS — those are

not in this library and CPU + OpenSSL is the right answer), SHA

hashing on the same accelerator family (use

doca-sha), or other DOCA libraries. For

those, use

doca-public-knowledge-map.

What this skill provides

This is a thin loader. The body keeps only the orientation

needed to pick the right next file. The substantive AES-GCM-specific

material lives in two companion files:

• CAPABILITIES.md — what DOCA AES-GCM can express on this version:

the two task types (encrypt and decrypt), the AEAD output shape

(ciphertext + auth tag on encrypt; verified plaintext on decrypt),

the AES-GCM key-type surface (only 128-bit and 256-bit — AES-192

is not in the enum, both cap-queried), the capability-query

surface (doca_aes_gcm_cap_* for task presence, key-type

support, and buffer sizing), the

AES-GCM error taxonomy (mapped onto the cross-library

DOCA_ERROR_* set, with explicit treatment of the

tag-verification-failure outcome as security-critical), the

observability surface (per-task completion events on the progress

engine), the safety policy that gates source / destination mmap

permission decisions and key-handling cautions, and the

path-selection rule (when to use doca-aes-gcm versus CPU OpenSSL

or a different DOCA crypto library).

• TASKS.md — step-by-step workflows for the six in-scope AES-GCM

verbs: configure, build, modify, run, test, debug.

Plus a Deferred task verbs block that points out-of-scope

questions at the right next skill.

The skill assumes a host or BlueField where DOCA is already

installed at the standard location and the user has the privileges

their public install profile expects. It does not cover installing

DOCA — that path goes through

doca-setup.

What this skill deliberately does not ship

This skill is agent guidance, not a samples or templates

bundle. To keep the boundary clean, it deliberately does not

contain — and pull requests should not add:

• **Pre-written DOCA AES-GCM application source code, in any

language.** The verified AES-GCM source code is the shipped C

samples at /opt/mellanox/doca/samples/doca_aes_gcm/. The agent's

job is to route the user to those files and prescribe a

minimum-diff modification on them via the universal

modify-a-sample workflow in

doca-programming-guide,

layered with the AES-GCM-specific overrides in

TASKS.md ## modify.

• Pre-computed AES-GCM test vectors. The skill tells the agent

to use a *published* test vector (e.g. NIST GCMVS, RFC 5288

AES-GCM examples) as the known-vector smoke; it does not ship a

vector bank of its own. The agent must cite the vector source so

the user can audit it.

• Pre-baked AES-GCM keys, IVs, or AAD strings. A key in this

repo is a key in every customer's repo — by construction, it must

not be there. The skill teaches the *shape* of the inputs; the

user supplies the actual bytes from their own key-management

system.

• Standalone build manifests (meson.build, CMakeLists.txt,

Cargo.toml, …) parked inside the skill. The agent constructs

the build manifest *in the user's project directory* against the

user's installed DOCA, where `pkg-config --modversion

doca-aes-gcm` is the source of truth.

• A samples/, bindings/, or reference/ subtree of any

kind. A mock or incomplete artifact in this skill's tree, even

one labeled "reference", is misleading: users will read it as

buildable.

Loading order

• Read this SKILL.md first to confirm the user's question is in

scope.

• **For the AES-GCM capability matrix, task types, key-size

surface, capability-query rules, permission matrix, AEAD

semantics, error taxonomy, observability, and safety /

path-selection policy, see CAPABILITIES.md.**

• **For step-by-step workflows — configure, build, modify, run,

test, debug — see TASKS.md.**

Both companion files cross-link to each other,

doca-version for the canonical

version-handling rules, and

doca-public-knowledge-map

whenever the right answer is "look it up in the public docs or the

installed package layout" rather than "AES-GCM-specific guidance".

Related skills

• doca-public-knowledge-map —

the routing table for every public DOCA documentation source and

the on-disk layout of an installed DOCA package. The DOCA AES-GCM

page lives at docs.nvidia.com/doca/sdk/DOCA-AES-GCM/; it is a

member of the DOCA Crypto Acceleration family alongside

doca-sha.

• doca-setup — env preparation,

install verification, and the *I have no install yet* path with

the public NGC DOCA container. This skill assumes its

preconditions are satisfied.

• doca-version — canonical DOCA

version-handling rules. This skill's

## Version compatibility

cross-links the four-way match rule and adds only the

AES-GCM-specific *"discover key sizes + task presence via cap

query"* overlay.

• doca-structured-tools-contract —

the bundle's structured-tools precedence rule (detect / prefer /

fall back / report). The Command appendix in

TASKS.md honors this contract.

• doca-programming-guide —

general DOCA programming patterns shared by every library: the

canonical pkg-config + meson build pattern, the universal

modify-a-shipped-sample first-app workflow, the universal

lifecycle, the cross-library DOCA_ERROR_* taxonomy, and the

program-side debug order. This skill layers AES-GCM specifics on

top.

• doca-sha — the sibling library in the

DOCA Crypto Acceleration family for hardware-accelerated SHA

hashing. Load alongside this skill when the user's flow is

authenticated-encryption *with a separate keyed hash* (rare —

AES-GCM already provides authentication via its tag) or when the

user is comparing offload paths between the two.

• doca-debug — the cross-cutting

debug ladder (install / version / build / link / runtime /

program / driver). AES-GCM-specific debug (key-size-not-supported,

oversized input, tag-verification failure on decrypt) overlays on

top of that ladder.