FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

A SmartNIC is a programmable network adapter card with programmable accelerators and Ethernet connectivity that can accelerate infrastructure applications running on the host.

An IPU is an advanced networking device with hardened accelerators and Ethernet connectivity that accelerates and manages infrastructure functions using tightly coupled, dedicated, programmable cores. An IPU offers full infrastructure offload and provides an extra layer of security by serving as a control point of the host for running infrastructure applications.

An IPU is capable of offloading the entire infrastructure stack from the host and can control how the host attaches to this infrastructure. This gives the service provider an extra layer of security and control, enforced in hardware by the IPU. A SmartNIC has similar networking and offload capabilities as the IPU but remains under the control of the host as a peripheral.

An IPU is capable of offloading the entire infrastructure stack from the host and can control how the host attaches to this infrastructure. This gives the service provider an extra layer of security and control, enforced in hardware by the IPU. A SmartNIC has similar networking and offload capabilities as the IPU but remains under the control of the host as a peripheral.

An Intel reference architecture that provides service providers and solution providers an efficient and cost-effective design to build production deployable IPU for the cloud data centers.