15 Year Evolution of Smart NICs

Network Interface Cards (NICs) are one of the key enablers of the modern-day Internet. They serve as gateways for connecting computing devices to networks for the exchange of data with other devices. Recently, the pervasive nature of Internet-enabled devices coupled with the growing demands for faster network access have necessitated the enhancement of NICs to Smart NICs (SNICs), capable of processing enormous volumes of data at near real-time speed. These devices are fitted with Compute Elements that allow them to handle several tasks, thus relieve their host's CPUs of these workloads. This dataset on SNICs is curated from 370 articles published in IEEE Xplore, over the past 15 years, from 2010 to 2024. It contains data about SNIC types, models, manufacturers, research foci, and application use cases.