At HPE Discover 2026, I found Intel’s newest NIC lineup. I think the line was at Computex 2026 in an off-site suite, but neither Ada nor I made it there. I think it may have also been at Dell Tech World, but I did not get a chance to see it. Luckily, yesterday afternoon, as the show floor quieted down at HPE Discover 2026, I managed to take a few photos of the Intel E835.
What is the Intel E835?
It seems a bit strange that in mid-2026, we are getting a 200GbE network adapter launch, but here we are. The Intle E835 is optimized for lower power consumption, providing a new network controller for basic connectivity. In AI clusters, we are transitioning from 400GbE to 800GbE and even 1.6TbE links. A 200Gbps-capable NIC that can run 2x 100GbE at line rate is useful for some lower-cost servers connecting to older networking infrastructure rather than the high-end AI build-out networks we are seeing today.
That comes to Intel’s key value proposition. It is comparing its solution to the popular NVIDIA ConnectX-6 Dx and is saying that it can use roughly half the power. To be fair, the ConnectX-6 Dx was launched in the second half of 2019. What Intel is really doing is just providing a newer technology NIC to a market where Mellanox-NVIDIA has been focusing on pushing the top-end. It stands to reason that using 7-year newer technology, Intel can cut the power consumption significantly.
Here is the capabilities slide that we will just leave here, but we get common features like RoCEv2 and iWARP, DCB, and more.
Now, let us see some NICs.
Intel E835-CQDA2 200Gps NIC
Here is the Intel E835-QCDA2. The C tells us we have 100GbE class ports. Next, the QDA2 tells us we have two QSFP ports.
Something interesting is that the spec page says QSFP28, which makes sense for 2x 100GbE. I am not exactly sure how you get a 200GbE port from one of these if you have QSFP28 (28 x 4 = 112). Notably, even the single-port cards are 200GbE from QSFP28 ports like this E835-CQDA1, so Intel seems to be doing this without using QSFP28-DD or QSFP56.
Still, the card is a low-profile form factor, making it easy to integrate. Also, these cards are sub-$600 at recommended prices, so they are much lower per-Gbps cost than many other adapters.
Intel E835-XXVDA2 2x 25GbE Adapter
We also saw the Intel E835-XXVDA2. This is a dual-port 25GbE adapter.
The recommended price for these cards when new is $216 or less, so perhaps this brings lower-cost 25GbE as well.
Intel E835-XXVDA4 4x 25GbE Adapter
Again, with XXV, we get 25GbE. With DA4, we get four SFP28 ports. As a result, we get the Intel E835-XXVDA4 quad port 25GbE card.
If you did not know this, fitting four SFP cages on a low-profile card is mechanically challenging, so Intel has a special bracket to handle the mounting.
These have a recommended price in the mid-$500 range.
Intel E835-XXVDA4F 4x 25GbE
If you wanted a larger card, there is the Intel E835-XXVDA4F, a full-height 4x 25GbE adapter.
Here, we have plenty of room for a full-height bracket and the 4x SFP28 ports.
This one, we could not find a price for. It also hits home as we used the Intel X710-DA4 full-height in many servers over the years.
Intel E835-XXVDA4 OCP NIC 3.0 4x 25GbE
Given that this is the lower-speed NIC option, we found the card also in an OCP NIC 3.0 form factor.
Intel showed off our favorite OCP NIC 3.0 format, the SFF with pull-tab design.
This one is in the low-to-mid $500’s in terms of cost.
Final Words
There are probably two ways to look at these cards. First, if you just want to add a new server to a lower-speed network, these make sense. In AI data centers, 25GbE is more of a management interface speed. For many data centers, and especially as you get out to the edge 25GbE is very popular. Many of those applications are also power-constrained, so saving 10W on a NIC can be very useful.
Hopefully, we can get one of these to try out. We bought an Intel E610 4-port card new from distribution that ended up not working in five different servers, but we likely just got a bad card. Maybe we will try again with the E835 series.
