Reading Time: 3 minutes A Data Processing Unit (DPU) is a programmable computer processor that tightly integrates a general-purpose CPU with network interface hardware. In VMware, starting with vSphere 8.0, DPU can be used to offload workloads from an x86 host to a DPU, as well as providing an additional layer of security by having an air-gapped environment running some of the processes. This is the result of Project Monterey.