Intel, Google Cloud create chip to improve data center performance

October 12, 2022  14:09

 

Intel and Alphabet Inc's Google Cloud have released a jointly developed chip that could improve data center efficiency and security.

Codenamed Mount Evans, the E2000 chip is a Data Processing Unit (DPU) coprocessor, but Intel prefers the acronym IPU (Infrastructure Processing Unit), Reuters reports

The E2000 Mount Evans combines P4 packet processing logic with ARM cores and accelerators based on some QuickAssist IPs. The chip is designed to perform tasks related to maintaining data center infrastructure, including – handling storage subsystems and sending data to the network.

Here's what the open chip card looks like:

Intel-Mount-Evans

Due to the design of data centers, a number of infrastructure-related workloads are directed to CPUs, which consumes CPU resources and reduces computational efficiency. DPUs like the E2000 help solve this problem.

According to Amin Vahdat, Google's vice president of development, the E2000 can completely decouple infrastructure from guest tasks and improve security when multiple customers share CPUs in the cloud.

Google Cloud will offer the new E2000 chip in a new data center product called the C3 VM, which will run on 4th-generation Intel Xeon processors. Xeons are considered Intel's most powerful processors, and Google Cloud is the first cloud service to use the latest generation of these chips.  

 


 
 
  • Read also
 
 
  • Archive