Firewall maker looks to safeguard its custom ASIC production with homegrown silicon
Fortinet on Tuesday revealed it will use Intel Foundry to fab its sixth-gen Security Processor (SP6), a nice win for Chipzilla's sputtering chipmaking biz.The chips feature dedicated accelerators designed specifically for the security and cryptographic operations required by modern hardware firewalls.The custom chips are one of Fortinet's defining features. Many cybersecurity hardware players build appliances around commodity hardware like x86 and Arm CPUs, but Fortinet prefers custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
The two companies haven't said when the chips will enter production, much less what the SP6's speeds and feeds will entail, though we imagine it'll have a bit more pep than Fortinet's SP5 chips.
The SP5 launched in 2023 and boasted support for layer 7 firewalling and IPsec VPN connectivity at speeds exceeding 30 Gbps. Throughput fell when advanced threat protection or SSL inspection was enabled, but Fortinet still claimed a speedy 4.3 Gbps and 3.3 Gbps, respectively.As you might have already figured out, Fortinet's SP line is designed primarily for smaller appliances like SD-WAN gateways, rather than larger datacenter-centric appliances built around its beefier NP and CP-series parts.While Intel couldn't offer much detail on the chip itself, we're told it will use the older Intel 4 process node rather than the leading-edge 18A process tech.Chipzilla also suggested Fortinet will draw on its experience in disaggregated semiconductor design and advanced packaging, which could mean a chiplet architecture with greater scalability. With so little detail, we can only speculate.Intel declined to say which technologies beyond Intel 4 the chip will use. The x86 giant also declined to comment on the availability of the product, noting only that "details regarding the Fortinet Security Processor 6 availability will be announced at a later date."While SP6 won't use the latest chipmaking tech, it will be built in an American fab by an American company, offering a level of supply chain security that remains difficult to find.
