JAKARTA - Intel and Google have just announced a collaboration to create a new chip category that is expected to become a promising business in the cloud computing industry which is booming in the market.
The chipmaker's first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) and Data Processing Unit (DPU), dubbed Mount Evans, will be supported by industry-standard programming languages and open-source Infrastructure Programmer Development tools, designed specifically for simplify access to technology in Google Cloud Data Center.
Mount Evans will later be sold to other parties outside of Google. The two companies would build huge data centers full of powerful physical computers and sell virtual slices of those machines to other businesses, which in turn would make better profits than building the machines themselves.
IPU architecture work lead and Intel partner Brad Burres emphasized that the advantage of devices like Mount Evans is the separation of functions between service providers and tenants. This helps ensure security from hacker attacks, greater isolation for all parties, and adds flexibility to the data center.
“(Mount Evans) allows tenants to have complete control over their CPUs. They can do things like run their own hypervisor. In this case, the cloud operator still fully controls the infrastructure functions such as network, storage and security because it is in the IPU,” said Burres.
Intel is not the only player making infrastructure chips. Nvidia Corp and Marvell Technology Inc have similar but slightly different offerings.
Nvidia announced the BlueField-3 DPU for AI and analytics workloads, which packs software-defined cybersecurity acceleration, storage, and networking capabilities. The company offers what they claim is the equivalent of up to 300 horsepower CPU cores.
Startups such as Fungible and Speedata are also developing DPUs for data center workloads, while Amazon Web Services several years ago launched the Nitro System, a combination of hardware and software DPUs aimed at providing enhanced performance and security.
But Intel and Google are working together on a software set that will be released for free in the hopes of making Intel's version of the chip an industry standard that's more widely used outside of Google's data centers.
Meanwhile, Google partner and vice president of engineering, Amin Vahdat said Google hopes to spur technology trends that make it easier for all data center operators to be more flexible about how they divide physical computer servers into virtual servers to suit any computing.
"The basic question of what a server is will go beyond what's in the sheet metal. The IPU will play a central role there," Vahdat said as quoted by Reuters, Thursday, October 28.
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