Intel today announced the release of its second programmable accelerator card (PAC) that is now shipping in the HPE ProLiant DL3809 Gen10 server. The PAC D5005 will provide increased workload acceleration capacity for HPE’s server, according to Intel.

The PAC is also the first product released from Intel’s recently reorganized Network Custom Logic group, which aims to deliver a portfolio of products for artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and cloud computing. 

“Intel’s FPGA [field programmable gate array] solutions have been set up to prime the data center both from an enterprise in an on-prem situation as well as to cloud providers to really accelerate data centric solutions,” said Patrick Dorsey, vice president and general manager of product marketing in Intel’s Programmable Solutions group. The PAC and other products will target data intensive spaces, including 5G networks and edge computing, he added. 

“We’re seeing a great opportunity for accelerated technologies that address the data demands for markets,” Dorsey said. Applications for Intel’s PAC D5005 include streaming analytics, AI, media transcoding, financial technology, and network security, he explained in a press briefing. 

“It addresses the compute intensive applications of those [uses] and more, but the key applications we’re seeing customers pick up on are those streaming analytics, media transcoding and AI workloads,” Dorsey said. 

“Today it takes a significant amount of computational capabilities to meet the applications our customers are trying to solve in the cloud and on prem in the enterprise. Hardware accelerators are in demand and offering offload capability that frees server CPUs to focus on higher value workloads,” he said. A lower total cost of ownership in data centers is one of the key benefits of this approach, he added.

The Intel PAC D5005, which is based on an Intel Stratix 10 SX FPGA and Intel Xeon Scalable processors, also includes acceleration libraries and development tools, according to Intel. HPE is the first server manufacturer to gain pre-qualified access to use the product in its servers, but other server vendors are also in the process of meeting qualification standards. 

Compared to Intel’s previous PAC release, the PAC D5005 includes three times the amount of programmable logic, four times as much memory or up to 32 GB of DDR4, and a bump from 40 to 100 gigabit ethernet ports.