Napatech leaps into market for data centre Infrastructure Processing Units

Napatech, a leading provider of programmable Network Interface Cards (NIC) – including SmartNICs and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom data centre networks – has announced the availability of the industry’s first production-grade 200 Gbps IPU based upon the Intel IPU Platform F2000X-PL.

Napatech’s F2070X IPU is engineered for cloud, enterprise and telecom data centres that are optimised for hybrid multi-cloud and Edge Computing architectures, supporting applications that may be virtualised (virtual machines), cloud-native (containers), bare-metal and microservices-based. IPUs meet the most demanding challenges of modern data centre designs without compromise, including:

• Performance: hardware-based, line-rate forwarding with sophisticated packet processing
• Efficiency: offloading of infrastructure processes, reclaiming valuable host CPU resources for applications and services
• Customisation: software and hardware programmable, delivering hardware performance at the speed of software innovation
• Security: Hard isolation between tenant applications, services and operator infrastructure processes
• Sustainability: tenant and service scalability per server, reducing cost, power and cooling per rack
• Ease of use: The Intel Xeon D processor simplifies moving the networking and storage stacks from the host to the IPU

Napatech’s F2070X IPU expands upon the Intel IPU Platform F2000X-PL, which is the architecture selected by early adopters in hyperscale cloud, telecom cloud and next-wave cloud networks. The Napatech F2070X IPU is a turnkey, production-grade, warranted and supported product based on this leadership Intel reference platform.

The F2070X IPU hardware is packed with the latest Intel technology, including an Intel Xeon D SoC and Intel Agilex 7 FPGA. The 200 Gbps card includes two ports configurable for 10, 25 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet. Multiple versions are available in various SoC, FPGA and memory configurations and are supported in standard, high-volume servers from leading manufacturers. The F2070X IPU is powered by Napatech’s feature-rich software and high-velocity roadmap that deliver NIC functionality while offloading and accelerating networking (OVS), storage (NVMe/TCP), security (TLS) and other workloads.

“The value of processing infrastructure applications on a dedicated computing system is widely recognised by hyperscale cloud service providers,” said Vlad Galabov, Director and Head of Omdia’s Cloud and Data Center Research Practice. “Adding extra intelligence within server connectivity to process packets in real-time can enable improved security, better computing performance and faster networking within an organisation, thus helping build a competitive advantage. The collaboration between Intel and Napatech creates a compelling product offering for the mass market.”

Henrik Brill Jensen, CEO, Napatech, added: “Napatech is pleased to have reached this important milepost in our collaboration with Intel. Our joint efforts to bring IPU hardware and software solutions to IT organisations of every size unlock new high-growth markets for our products and underpin our aim for transformational growth of our business.”