Intel has made two major decisions that will have a significant impact on its future. The first is the sunsetting of its network switch business, while the second is ending their RISC-V Pathfinder program without any notice or announcement.
The decision to end Intel’s network switch business comes as no surprise given the company’s recent focus on other areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing. This move follows Intel’s acquisition of Barefoot Networks in 2019 and subsequent integration into their Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). With this shift in focus away from traditional networking solutions, it makes sense for them to discontinue further development of their existing offerings.
The sudden termination of Intel’s RISC-V Pathfinder Program also came as a shock to many industry observers who had expected more progress from this initiative over time. The program was launched back in 2018 with an aim to explore how open source processor architectures could be used within data centers and other enterprise environments; however, it appears that these plans have now been scrapped altogether by Intel for unknown reasons at present.
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