Marvell’s Octeon 10 data processing unit (DPU) isn't limited to cloud and data center applications, it’s designed to accelerate security, networking, and storage workloads anywhere in the network.

The new chip, announced today, intelligently offloads data processing and communication tasks from the CPU, thus freeing up clock cycles traditionally consumed by input/output (I/O) overheads.

But in addition to PCIe NIC cards, Marvell plans to support embedded applications like edge switches, SD-WAN appliances, routers, and firewalls.

When it launches in the second half of 2021, Octeon 10 will be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC) 5-nanometer process and offer up to 36 ArmV9 Neoverse N2 processor cores, with support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity. The chips also feature an on-die 1Tb/s switch and hardware acceleration for IPsec, machine learning, and vector package processing.

“The combination of these N2 cores and 5 nanometer really is giving us a very strong performance per watt, and that's something very critical for the applications we're targeting,” said John Sakamoto, VP of Marvell’s infrastructure processor business unit.

These capabilities will enable operators to apply artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning functions on data flows at line speeds, he added.

“We've targeted use cases like threat detection and content aware service delivery, and some of our initial customers are doing some beam-forming optimization as well as predictive maintenance,” he said.

Compared to existing DPUs, like those offered by Nvidia, Intel, and Fungible, Marvel’s Octeon 10 is designed for use cases in and outside the data center.

“I can't take a 400 Gb/s DPU and run it in a 5G system. The power profile and the cost expectations are not going to be in line,” Sakamoto said about existing DPUs. “So, we have built devices that are power and cost optimized around 50 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s data paths.”

Octeon 10 won’t require customers and independent software vendors to support a proprietary software development kit either, Sakamoto noted. “We're not trying to create a closed ecosystem and lock people in.”

Octeon will be available beginning in the fourth quarter in a variety of SKUs ranging from a power-optimized version with eight cores and a thermal design power (TDP) of 10 watts to a high-end, cloud-focused version with 36 cores operating at 60 watts.