By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters). Intel Corp Alphabet (NASDAQ) Inc’s Google Cloud announced Wednesday that they had collaborated to develop a new type of chip, which Intel believes will be a big seller in the booming market for cloud computing.

Mount Evans, the new chip that will be sold to other than Google, is a reflection of how cloud computing providers work. These companies build massive data centers with powerful computers, and then sell virtual machines to businesses that get more bang for their buck.

Tasks like setting up virtual machines and transporting customer data are overhead expenses for cloud service providers. Google and Intel refer to the Mount Evans chip as an “infrastructure computing unit” (IPU). It speeds up these tasks while separating them from their main computing tasks. It also protects those functions against hackers. This allows for greater flexibility in the data centre.

We see it as strategic vital. “It’s an extremely crucial area for us as well as for the data centre,” Nick McKeown (senior vice president, network and edge group, Intel) told Reuters.

Intel is not alone in making infrastructure chips. Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:) Technology Inc and Marvell Corporation (NASDAQ:) Technology Inc both offer similar offerings, though slightly different.

Google and Intel are working together to develop a suite of software tools for the free release of their chip.

Amin Vahdat is a Google Fellow and Technical Lead for Networking at the company. He said that Google wants to encourage a new technology trend which allows data center operators to have more flexibility in how their computers are sliced up into virtual servers to meet any computing task.

“The fundamental question of what constitutes a server goes beyond the physical structure of sheet metal. Vahdat stated that the IPU would play a key role in this.