What’s a DPU?
Specialists in moving data in data centers, DPUs, or data processing units, are a new class of programmable processor and will join CPUs and GPUs as one of the three pillars of computing.
Of course, you’re probably already familiar with the central processing unit. Flexible and responsive, for many years CPUs were the sole programmable element in most computers.
More recently the GPU, or graphics processing unit, has taken a central role. Originally used to deliver rich, real-time graphics, their parallel processing capabilities make them ideal for accelerated computing tasks of all kinds. Thanks to these capabilities, GPUs are essential to artificial intelligence, deep learning and big data analytics applications.
Over the past decade, however, computing has broken out of the boxy confines of PCs and servers — with CPUs and GPUs powering sprawling new hyperscale data centers.
These data centers are knit together with a powerful new category of processors. The DPU has become the third member of the data-centric accelerated computing model.
“The CPU is for general-purpose computing, the GPU is for accelerated computing, and the DPU, which moves data around the data center, does data processing.”
In QUARC, DPUs are the technology platforms chosen to support secure communication systems. DPUs open the door for accelerated computing ( = accelerated processing and accelerated networking). QUARC is training the experts of the future in DPU development – the experts of tomorrow.