Arm's Data Center Two Step

Smart offload chips point the way to servers

By Rick Merritt, EETimes
November 5, 2018

Arm put smart offload processors in the spotlight at its annual developers’ conference because they are stepping stones to its data center ambitions. The cloud is the latest target for the still-small designer of cores that investor Softbank is betting will be a semiconductor giant someday.

The name is a relatively new handle, but the chips have been around for years. They first emerged as TCP offload engines more than 15 years ago. Now, they sometimes ride network interface cards called smart NICs.

Along with the new smart names, the chips have taken on more jobs. Today, they handle a flexible basket of security, storage, and virtualization tasks.

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