It kind of can if you want to add programmability to your switches. So on top of traditional switches, you can add a cluster of DPUs in order to add networking

It kind of can if you want to add programmability to your switches. So on top of traditional switches, you can add a cluster of DPUs in order to add networking functionalities to your switches. Microsoft has done just that. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/nsdi23-bansal.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/nsdi23-bansal.pdf