New Ultra Accelerator Link Open-standard Interconnect for AI Accelerators Being Developed
Strangely, Nvidia is not a development partner
AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel, Meta and Microsoft have joined forces to develop a new Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink), a new industry standard to enable high-speed, low-latency connections for datacentre-grade AI and HPC accelerators. UALink will allow for interconnecting up to 1024 accelerators within one pod, which would be a big achievement. We notice Nvidia is not among the companies spurring the new interconnects development, probably because it will directly compete with the companies own NVLink.
The UALink initiative is designed to create an open standard for AI accelerators to communicate more efficiently. The first UALink spec, version 1, will enable up to 1024 accelerators withing an AI computing pod to interconnect in a reliable, scalable and low latency network. The spec allows for direct data transfers between the memory attached to the accelerators., such as AMD’s Instinct GPUs for specialized processors like Intel’s Gaudi, enhancing the performance and efficiency in AI computing.
“The work done by the companies in UALink to create an open, high performance and scalable accelerator fabric is critical for the future of AI,” says Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager, Data Centre Solutions Group at AMD in a press release. “Together, we bring extensive experience in creating large scale AI and high-performance computing solutions that are based on open-standards, efficiency and robust ecosystem support. AMD is committed to contributing our expertise, technologies and capabilities to the group as well as other open industry efforts to advance all aspects of AI technology and solidify an open AI ecosystem.”
The UALink Consortium will be established to oversee the development and implementation of the UALink standard. The consortium is expected to be incorporated by the third quarter if 2024, aligning with the release of the 1.0 specification. Companies that join the consortium woll have access to the specification and can contribute to its ongoing development.
