A data processing unit (DPU) is a channel controller, a programmable specialized

electronic circuit An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electri ...

with

hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calc ...

data processing Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information. Data processing is a form of '' information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by ...

for

data-centric computing Data-centric computing is an emerging concept that has relevance in information architecture and data center design. It describes an information system where data is stored independently of the applications, which can be upgraded without costly ...

. The data is transmitted to and from the component as multiplexed packets of information. A DPU generally contains a

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

NIC NIC may refer to: Banking and insurance companies * National Insurance Corporation, Uganda * NIC Bank, a commercial bank in Kenya Politics, government and economics * National Ice Center, an agency that provides worldwide navigational ice a ...

and programmable data acceleration engines. This allows DPUs to have the generality and the programmability of

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

s while being specialized to operate efficiently on networking packets, storage requests or analytics requests. The data acceleration engines differentiates itself from a CPU by a larger degree of parallelism (required to process many requests) and from a GPU by a MIMD architecture rather than an

SIMD Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should ...

architecture (required as each request needs to make different decisions and follow a different path through the chip). DPUs can be either ASIC-based, FPGA-based or SoC-based. DPUs have been increasingly used in

data centers A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

and

supercomputers A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

since their introduction in the 2010s due to the rise in use of

, big data,

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

, and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

/ deep learning. DPUs are designed to be independent infrastructure endpoints. DPU vendors & product lines include: * AMD/Pensando: Capri, Elba & DSC *

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

: Stingray *

Fungible In economics, fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are essentially interchangeable, and each of whose parts is indistinguishable from any other part. Fungible tokens can be exchanged or replaced; for exa ...

: F & S Series *

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

: Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) *

Kalray Kalray is a fabless semiconductor company. Founded in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA French lab, with investors such as Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, Safran, NXP Semiconductors, CEA and Bpifrance. Product history The first Kalray paten ...

: Kalray K200-LP * Marvell Technology: OCTEON and ARMADA *

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

Mellanox Technologies Mellanox Technologies Ltd. ( he, מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות בע"מ) was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, softwa ...

: BlueField, ConnectX, Innova Software vendors utilizing DPUs include: * Bloombase *

Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in San ...

* DDN *

Fortinet Fortinet is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and sells cybersecurity solutions, such as physical firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion prevention systems, and endpoint secu ...

Palo Alto Networks Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is an American multinational cybersecurity company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The core products is a platform that includes advanced firewalls and cloud-based offerings that extend those firewalls to ...

VAST Data VAST Data is a privately held technology company focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning computing infrastructure. Founded in 2016, the company offers a data computing platform that allows users to train AI models by storing and ...

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

* WekaIO

References

{{Hardware acceleration Electronics Data processing Artificial intelligence Application-specific integrated circuits Hardware acceleration Digital electronics Electronic design Electronic design automation

See also

References