The New Xilinx SmartNIC Looks More Like a 100Gbps Arm-based Coprocessor Latest entry into the server disaggregation space has an FPGA chip and an Arm SoC, with a way to split network traffic between the two — and maybe a new way to make use of that FPGA. It’s being called a high-bandwidth, “smart” network interface controller — the latest in an emerging line of distributed processing components for so-called “disaggregated” servers. But a close examination of Xilinx’s new SN1000 Alveo SmartNIC series, announced Tuesday, reveals an emerging softness about the classes of workloads this new accelerator may be capable of performing.