The SmartNIC revolution fell flat, but AI might change that

In 2013, Amazon Web Services announced a new C3 instance type and made vague references to what it described as "enhanced networking" enabled by an Intel Virtual Function interface. The cloud colossus later admitted that "enhanced networking" was made possible by using souped-up network cards that included enough processing …

[Duncan Macdonald]

Is a "Smart" NIC worthwhile ?

Unless a computer has a heavy traffic load a smart NIC is not going to make much difference to CPU loading.

Some servers (especially shared ones in datacentres) have enough network traffic for the reduction in CPU loading from the use of a smart NIC to be worthwhile - however for most servers (and almost all end point devices (desktops,laptops,embedded computers etc)) the CPU loading caused by the network traffic is too low to make a smart NIC economic.

[Ashentaine]

Hey, remember that thing your company lost a bunch of money on a decade ago because it wasn't really necessary and didn't take off? Well we just stuck a bunch of AI into it! You know, the really impressive AI! So you should totally buy it again, because otherwise your competitor might buy it and figure out something useful to do with it first... and you don't want that, riiiiiiight?

No, of course you don't. So, how many should I put you down for?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article with "AI revolution drives DPU revolution" pops up in parallel to the article on even some hyper-AI cheerleader having to confess on the slow adoption of AI in the enterprise (meaning the reality is likely worse). Brilliant if planned, El Reg!

If I were a betting man, I'd wonder where to lay my "flutter" for when the wheels start coming off. Year's end? End of 2026? Then we can follow the one useful thing to ever come out of Gartner: the hype curve along its screaming rollercoaster dive before we move to the things LLMs are actually useful at (*)

(*) OK, admittedly the recent article I read on how mass-produced AI CVs are bringing HR and recruiters to their knees means it is kind of sort of useful, for the pain those useless mongrels have inflicted on job-seekers for years. Ghost this, you bastards!

[BakerHWoods]

So AWS Nitro, Azure Boost, and GCP Titanium are examples of a revolution that 'fell flat'? You know, the technology that enabled VMware Cloud, bare metal K8s, decoupled compute and block storage with EC2, GCE, and Azure VMs? Using VMware as an example today, when the company is a shell of its former self post Broadcom acquisition and I can't speak to enough customers that are looking to get off of it, is ridiculous. This is truly a mediocre article.