Taking on Nvidia for data centre interconnect with UAlink
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The data centre industry has created a group to take on Nvidia’s NVlink GPU interconnect technology.
AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Meta and Microsoft have formed the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink).
UALInk is developing an open standard interface by the end of this year for low latency interconnect for next-generation AI Accelerators in data centres.
Nvidia currently dominates this market with 80% market share, using it proprietary NVlink technology to connect its GPUs into one large cluster.
Both NVlink and UAlink are different from the Ethernet, Ultra Ethernet (UEC) or Infiniband technologies that connect servers and racks in an AI data centre.
- Nvidia opens up NVLink for chiplets to take on PCI Express
- Ultra Ethernet, a complete new Ethernet-based standard
“In a very short period of time, the technology industry has embraced challenges that AI and HPC have uncovered. Interconnecting accelerators like GPUs requires a holistic perspective when seeking to improve efficiencies and performance. At UEC, we believe that UALink’s scale-up approach to solving pod cluster issues complements our own scale-out protocol, and we are looking forward to collaborating together on creating an open, ecosystem-friendly, industry-wide solution that addresses both kinds of needs in the future,” said J Metz, Chair of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium.
The UALink Promoter Group companies bring extensive experience creating large-scale AI and HPC solutions based on open standards, efficiency and robust ecosystem support. The group will develop a specification to define a high-speed, low-latency interconnect for scalable communications between accelerators and switches in AI computing pods.
The 1.0 specification will enable the connection of up to 1,024 accelerators within an AI computing pod and allow for direct loads and stores between the memory attached to accelerators, such as GPUs, in the pod.
The UALink Promoter Group has formed the UALink Consortium and expects it to be incorporated in Q3 of 2024. The 1.0 specification is expected to be available in Q3 of 2024 and made available to companies that join the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium.
“The work being done by the companies in UALink to create an open, high performance and scalable accelerator fabric is critical for the future of AI. 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,” said Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Group at AMD.
“Broadcom is proud to be one of the founding members of the UALink Consortium, building upon our long-term commitment to increase large-scale AI technology implementation into data centers. It is critical to support an open ecosystem collaboration to enable scale-up networks with a variety of high-speed and low-latency solutions,” said Jas Tremblay, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Solutions Group, Broadcom
“Open standards are important to HPE as we innovate in supercomputing and increase access to systems. As a founding member of the UALink industry consortium, we look forward to contributing our expertise in high performance networking and systems, and collaborating to develop a new open standard for accelerator interconnects for the next generation of supercomputing,” said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and general manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions, HPE
“UALink is an important milestone for the advancement of Artificial Intelligence computing. Intel is proud to co-lead this new technology and bring our expertise in creating an open, dynamic AI ecosystem. As a founding member of this new consortium, we look forward to a new wave of industry innovation and customer value delivered though the UALink standard. This initiative extends Intel’s commitment to AI connectivity innovation that includes leadership roles in the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and other standards bodies,” said Sachin Katti, SVP & GM, Network and Edge Group, Intel Corporation
www.intel.com; www.amd.com; www.hpe.com
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