Packet and Netronome Innovate on Smart Networking-Focused Edge Compute Hardware

NEW YORK, NY, December 18, 2018 - Packet, the leading bare metal cloud for developers, and Netronome, a leader in high-performance intelligent networking solutions, today announced a new hardware platform that efficiently powers cloud-native workloads at the edge. The joint design, which will be deployed throughout all of Packet’s cloud and edge sites, combines the latest in disaggregated computing architecture in a cost-effective bare metal form factor.

Cloud-native and edge workloads demand stringent cost, power and latency parameters without compromising security and the pace of innovation. Packet’s new compact microservers meet these requirements while providing the tenant isolation needed in a bare metal environment. Due to its ultra-compact and low-power design (<100W per microserver), up to 120 microservers can fit in a single 42U rack, enabling the build-out of performance-driven edge infrastructures while maintaining real estate and power requirements. 

“With this platform we are bringing the lessons of hyperscale providers directly to the edge with a disaggregated, accelerator-based architecture and a custom designed hardware model,” said Zachary Smith, CEO of Packet. “We see cloud-native network workload driving huge demand at the infrastructure edge and the combination of SmartNIC technology and eBPF expertise from Netronome brings not only significant cost savings but also unique performance capabilities to our content, IoT and Telco customers.”

With the end of Moore’s Law and the rise of cloud-native principles, hardware is evolving to take advantage of new disaggregated architectures. As the data collected and processed at the edge grows, the need for low-latency networking and application offload at breakthrough economics becomes critical.

“New edge-based technologies and applications such as autonomous vehicles, AI, and augmented reality are heavily latency dependent and require the strongest of security without sacrificing performance,” said Niel Viljoen, CEO and founder of Netronome. “Packet’s new Netronome SmartNIC-accelerated, low-latency Edge cloud infrastructure with eBPF offload will enable developers to effectively utilize the massive amounts of collectable data on the edge to build and test highly secure, real-time applications.” 

Packet and Netronome worked closely with ODM partners to design and manufacture the dense, high performance networking model needed to support powerful microservers that are highly efficient on a cost per watt basis. The investments made by the companies are cross architecture and will extend to Intel, AMD and Ampere.

Netronome designs and markets server networking and coprocessor platforms, including its market leading silicon accelerators, boards and software, enabling customers to increase the efficiency and security of their modern data center infrastructure. Netronome products reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and drive significantly higher server performance resulting in increased revenue per server for service providers. The evolution of lower cost and standards-based software-defined networking implemented in servers has enabled rapid innovation and transformed the economics for data center compute and networking. However, such new deployments continue to face significant scaling and efficiency challenges with the rapid move from 10GbE to 25/50GbE and higher bandwidth network infrastructure requirements. Netronome brings back much-needed scale and efficiency, without compromising flexibility, simplicity or the speed of innovation needed in today’s cloud networks running businesses of all sizes. Netronome has a global footprint and is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA.