About six months after Intel unveiled its newest processor category–the infrastructure processing unit (IPU)--the company announced at its Intel FPGA technology event this week that it is partnering with three companies on IPU solutions.
Intel said it is collaborating with Inspur, Ruijie Networks and Silicom in an effort to grow the ecosystem around IPUs. It will work with the new OEM partners to support their efforts to design and develop new FPGA-based IPU solutions that will deliver “highly customized and programmable solutions” to cloud and networking customers, with the aim of creating programmable networks to help those customers respond to evolving business challenges, according to an Intel statement.
“Collaborating with these innovative partners extends the secure and programmable benefits of the IPU platform to a broader set of customers,” said Patrick Dorsey, Intel vice president in the Programmable Solutions Group, in the statement. “Our combined work together with the ecosystem and leading cloud and communication services providers is enabling developers to realize the next chapter in data center architectures through ecosystem-enabled and tightly coupled CPU and IPU platforms.”
Last June, at its Intel Innovations 2021 event, the company outlined a vision for IPUs to enable new network capabilities like telemetry, congestion control and traffic steering. This move was widely viewed as another step in Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s plan to redefine the company’s mission and technology roadmap at a time when it has been under increasing competitive pressure from Nvidia and others.
Among the partners, Israel-based Silicom, which works in the areas of high-performance networking and data infrastructure solutions, is an existing Intel partner which will now work to create a unique IPU based on Intel’s FPGA-based Oak Springs Canyon IPU platform, which supports 2X100 Gigabit Ethernet (200 GbE.)
Meanwhile, Inspur, based in China, will use Oak Springs Canyon to “offer its customers a platform that leverages the IPU to increase data center efficiency, while providing flexibility needed for differentiation,” the statement said.
Ruijie Networks, also based in China, plans to use Oak Springs Canyon to extend Intel’s FPGA-based IPU portfolio with 100 GbE and 200 GbE options. “The platform allows its customers to deploy a uniquely powerful combination of the Intel Agilex FPGA architectural advancements delivered with Intel Xeon® processors to create the customized IPU solution optimized for their unique data center applications,” the statement said.
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