Intel Unveils Infrastructure Processing Unit for Improved DC Efficiency, Manageability

Intel has unveiled its vision for the infrastructure processing unit (IPU), a programmable networking device designed to enable cloud and communication service providers to reduce overhead and free up performance for central processing units (CPUs), during the Six Five Summit. With an IPU, customers will better utilize resources with a secure, programmable, stable solution that enables them to balance processing and storage.

The IPU is a programmable network device that intelligently manages system-level infrastructure resources by securely accelerating those functions in a data center.

It allows cloud operators to shift to a fully virtualized storage and network architecture while maintaining high performance and predictability, as well as a high degree of control.

The IPU has dedicated functionality to accelerate modern applications that are built using a microservice-based architecture in the data center. Research from Google and Facebook has shown 22 percent to 80 percent of CPU cycles can be consumed by microservices communication overhead.

With the IPU, a cloud provider can securely manage infrastructure functions while enabling its customer to entirely control the functions of the CPU and system memory.

An IPU offers the ability to:

• Accelerate infrastructure functions, including storage virtualization, network virtualization and security with dedicated protocol accelerators.
• Free up CPU cores by shifting storage and network virtualization functions that were previously done in software on the CPU to the IPU.
• Improve data center utilization by allowing for flexible workload placement.
• Enable cloud service providers to customize infrastructure function deployments at the speed of software.

“As a result of Intel’s collaboration with a majority of hyperscalers, Intel is already the volume leader in the IPU market with our Xeon-D, FPGA and Ethernet components,” said Patty Kummrow, Vice President, Data Platforms Group and General Manager, Ethernet Products Group, Intel. “The first of Intel’s FPGA-based IPU platforms are deployed at multiple cloud service providers and our first ASIC IPU is under test.”