Intel® Infrastructure Processing Unit (Intel® IPU)
Programmable network devices that intelligently manage system-level resources by securely accelerating networking and storage infrastructure functions in a data center.
Intel® Infrastructure Processing Unit (Intel® IPU)
Service providers and enterprises are investing heavily in hyper-scale data centers to deliver efficient compute for cloud native applications and micro-services. The applications delivering these services must have access to high-speed, low latency storage and a secure networking infrastructure.
However, infrastructure services such as virtual switching, security, and storage can consume a significant number of CPU cycles. Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) accelerate network infrastructure, freeing up CPU cores for improved application performance. IPUs enable cloud service providers to customize infrastructure function deployments at the speed of software, while improving data center utilization by allowing for flexible workload placement.1 2
Learn More About Intel® IPUs
Watch this exciting video to understand how the Intel® Infrastructure Processing Unit (Intel® IPU) is addressing the needs of modern cloud service providers. The Intel® IPU provides key benefits such as enhanced security through isolation of tenant applications from provider services, infrastructure task offload to improve CPU utilization and performance, and enablement of virtual storage for increased datacenter flexibility.
| Products | Features | Target Acceleration Workloads | Related Documents |
|---|---|---|---|
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White paper: IPU Based Cloud Infrastructure › |
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Solution brief: Data Center Acceleration with Intel FPGAs › White paper: IPU Based Cloud Infrastructure › Solution brief: IPUs Improve Network Latency in Microservices-Based Applications › Solution brief: IPUs Reduce CPU Overhead in NVMe/TCP Workloads › |
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Solution brief: Data Center Acceleration with Intel FPGAs › MIT white paper: Microservice Benchmarking on Intel IPUs running Napatech Software › |
Platform Selector Guide
| Features | Intel® IPU Platform C5000X-PL | Intel® IPU Platform F2000X-PL |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Category | ||
| Target Market | IPU for Cloud Service Providers | Communications Service Provider (CoSP) for Telco Cloud |
| Type | IPU Platform | IPU Platform |
| FPGA Resources | ||
| FPGA | Intel® Stratix® 10 DX | Intel® Agilex™ |
| Logic Elements | 1,325K | 2,308K |
| On-Chip Memory | 114 Mb | 246 Mb |
| DSP Blocks | 5,184 | 1,640 |
| Processor | ||
| Type | Intel® Xeon® D-1612 Processor | Intel® Xeon® D-1736 Processor |
| Memory | ||
| DDR4 | 20 GB | 32 GB |
| SRAM | - | - |
| HBM | - | - |
| Flash | 1.25 GB | 2 GB |
| Interfaces and Modules | ||
| PCI Express* | 4.0 x8 | 4.0 x16 |
| QSFP Interface | x2 | x2 |
| Network Interface | 2 x25 Gbps | 2 x100 Gbps |
| Intel® MAX® 10 FPGA Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) | N/A | Yes |
| FPGA Interface Manager | - | Yes |
| Mechanical, Thermal, and Power | ||
| Form Factor | ½ length, full height | 3/4 length, full height |
| Width | Single slot | Single slot |
| Maximum Power Consuption (TDP) | 75W | 150W |
| Tools Support | ||
| Intel® Acceleration Stack for Intel® Xeon® CPU with FPGAs | - | Yes |
| Intel® Quartus® Prime Software | Yes | Yes |
| Intel oneAPI Toolkits | - | |
| Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) | Yes | Yes |
| Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit | - | |
| Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) | Yes | Yes |
| Insfrastructure Programmer Development Kit (IPDK) | - | Yes |
| P4 | - | Yes |
| How to Buy | ||
| Contact | Inventec | |
| Silicom |
Solutions for Enterprise and Cloud
Intel and Baidu Empower IaaS of the Future
Creating a new Intel® IPU-based computing platform for optimal cloud platform management and cost-effectiveness.
CMCC Self-Developed Hypercard for Cloud
Leveraging Intel's data center technology, China Mobile independently developed, the hypercard hardware accelerator card.
Intel’s IPUs to Power VMware’s Next-Gen Infrastructure
Intel technology enables VMware to give customers unified management of virtual machines, containers and bare metal environments.
IPU-Based Cloud Infrastructure: The Fulcrum for Digital Business
As Cloud Service Providers consider their investment strategies and technology plans for the future, learn how IPUs can offer a path to accelerate and financially optimize cloud services.
Solutions for Network
Intel SmartNICs for Telecommunications
Intel® FPGA–based SmartNICs can help optimize the efficiency and performance of your converged wireless-wireline network.
Intel, Kaloom Create P4-Programmable Network Solutions
Advanced network systems with the P4 programming language and Intel® Tofino family of Ethernet switch ASICs.
Real-World IPU Benefits
Discover what customers and partners have to say about the benefits of IPUs from Intel.
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.
More Resources
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Product and Performance Information
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Intel has a diverse portfolio of acceleration solutions to meet the evolving needs of network, cloud and enterprise workloads.