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Next step, AMD acquires DPU manufacturers to complete the data center business puzzle

Release on : Apr 7, 2022

Next step, AMD acquires DPU manufacturers to complete the data center business puzzle

AMD acquires DPU maker
Recently, AMD announced that it would acquire Pensando, a DPU chip maker, at a cost of $1.9 billion, or about 12.1 billion yuan. This is another acquisition after AMD's successful acquisition of FPGA chip maker Xilinx, and this acquisition will make AMD's layout in the data center field more complete.

According to reports, the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.
 

Pensando was founded in 2017 by four former Cisco engineers. The company is a data center service provider whose products are mainly distributed service cards, which are currently known as DPU data processors. Pensando's latest generation of distributed service card Elba adopts Arm CPU core architecture and TSMC's 7nm process technology.

Pensando already has many customers, the main customers include Goldman Sachs, Microsoft's cloud division Azure, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud and so on. In addition, HP is also Pensando's largest partner. Aruba Neworks, a subsidiary of HP, has cooperated with Pensando to develop the first series of switches to solve distributed services. The Aruba CX 1000 Distributed Services Switch combines Aruba's data center switching expertise with Pensando's Elba for network servers.

DPU is the third most important computing power chip in the data center after CPU and GPU. Its function is to unload part of the computing power of CPU and release it to upper-layer applications. It supports infrastructure-layer services such as storage, security, and service quality management, and helps users obtain Super cost-effective computing power can effectively overcome communication delays and improve data security.

In recent years, AMD, Intel and NVIDIA have been actively deploying data centers, and DPU has become an indispensable part. Before this, NVIDIA and Intel have already deployed DPU product business to strengthen the layout of data centers.

NVIDIA laid out earlier, and has launched a number of DPU products, and will launch a new computing platform BlueField-3 DPU this year. ASUS, Atos, Dell Technologies, Gigabyte, H3C, IBM, Inspur, Lenovo, Nettrix, Pluribus Networks, Quanta/QCT and Supermicro, among others, include NVIDIA BlueField DPUs in their innovative solutions.

Intel will launch a new infrastructure processor IPU in 2021, which is regarded as Intel's version of the DPU. Intel has announced that it will work with Inspur, Ruijie Networks, and Silicom to jointly design and develop a new FPGA infrastructure processor (IPU) solution. solutions, providing highly customized programmable solutions for cloud and network customers.

For AMD, if it wants to compete with NVIDIA and Intel in the data center field, it is necessary to complete the DPU, and through acquisition, it will undoubtedly be faster and more convenient. Previously, AMD has completed the FPGA through the acquisition of Xilinx. Today, AMD can be said to have high-performance CPU, GPU and FPGA chips. After the acquisition of Pensando, AMD will be able to provide a broader portfolio of high-performance and adaptive solutions.

AMD CEO Dr. Su Zifeng said that to build a leading data center with the best performance, security, flexibility and lowest total cost, a wide range of computing engines is required, and the acquisition of Pensando will provide our high-performance CPU, GPU , FPGA and adaptive SoC portfolio add a leading distributed services platform.

After the acquisition, Pensando team executives will join AMD's data center solutions division. Pensando will continue to focus on product and technology roadmaps, and expand its scale to accelerate its business to respond to growing market opportunities. With Pensando's participation, it is believed that AMD will also It has the ability to provide more optimized solutions at the chip, software and platform level.