VMWARE HAS QUIETLY WALKED BACK ITS SMARTNIC AMBITIONS

Summary from the TLDR IT newsletter

VMware has quietly stopped selling its distributed firewalls for SmartNICs, walking back ambitions to bring hyperscale networking models to on-premise private clouds. The effort involved complex microcode integration with hardware from AMD and Nvidia, but struggled with Intel chips and ultimately failed to attract paying customers as conventional NICs improved. While standalone SmartNIC sales have ended, VMware's Distributed Services Engine remains supported within its Cloud Foundation suite.