Specialized processors optimized for particular workloads are making a comeback, according to Shannon Poulin, VP of the Data Center Group at Intel.

He said the company is working on accelerating common tasks like analytics and encryption directly on the chip, through things like integrated Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).

Intel believes this approach is a big step towards Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI), where the orchestration layer would intelligently direct tasks to the most appropriate hardware.

“We believe data centers need to change”
Poulin told the audience that ever-increasing quantities of data to be analyzed were putting pressure on Intel as a silicon manufacturer. To meet the challenge, the company has turned to hardware acceleration on the chip - an approach practiced in the early days of computing, before the industry moved on to more generic platforms.

“We need to go down this path where, if somebody has an analytics workload, someone has a security workload, someone who’s doing a specific task – we need to find a way to accelerate the silicon for them, and give them a better experience,” he said during a London event dedicated to the digital services economy.

In Intel’s version of the future, specialized chips would be managed by highly automated software, along with other data center resources.

“We need to have a situation where any workload that might come in – it might require a different amount of I/O, a different amount of memory, a different amount of compute, a different amount of storage,” explained Poulan.

“We need to be able to flexibly configure that using the orchestration layer so that it says: ‘hey, what workload is coming in? Oh, I see, it’s an ERP workload, need a lot of compute for that.’ I need to be able to configure my underlying compute, network and storage availability so I can deliver a great ERP experience.”

The switch is not going to be instant, but Poulan suggested that data center transformation is inevitable, adding that large telecoms companies were leading the way in adoption of SDI.

“Like with virtualization, I think we will be having this conversation for the next seven years- about people going on that journey, and I think we’re literally first couple of years in,” he said.

Intel is already testing its approach to SDI with the recently released Xeon E5 v3 SoCs, which can be configured to eliminate the need for specialized hardware such as network processors (NPUs), co-processors and separate FPGAs.

HP is currently giving its customers a free software–defined storage platform license with every purchase of Xeon E5 v3 based servers.

Poulan suggested that in the future, we can expect more chips with FPGAs on board, offering more performance in the same power envelope, and thus lowering the cost of data center infrastructure.

“We want to deliver the best TCO possible. The best performance-per-watt-per-dollar for whatever configuration of a data center you’re in,” he said.