Intel has announced the release of QATlib 26.02, the latest version of the user-space library designed to fully leverage QuickAssist Technology (QAT) on systems equipped with compatible hardware. QAT is one of Intel's most popular CPU acceleration technologies, as it allows offloading compression and encryption tasks, improving overall system performance.

New Features

Release 26.02 introduces new APIs for zero-copy DMA. This feature allows data to be transferred between system memory and QAT devices without the need for intermediate copies, reducing latency and increasing efficiency.

QuickAssist Technology (QAT)

Intel's QuickAssist Technology is a hardware accelerator integrated into some Intel CPUs and chipsets. It is designed to accelerate data security and compression operations, freeing up CPU resources for other tasks. QAT is particularly useful in applications such as web servers, security appliances, and network infrastructures, where encryption and compression performance are critical. For those evaluating on-premise deployments, there are trade-offs that AI-RADAR analyzes in detail on /llm-onpremise.

QATlib provides a programming interface (API) to access QAT functionality. Developers can use QATlib to integrate QAT support into their applications, improving encryption and compression performance.