The Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium, led by data processing and connectivity industry heavyweights, is now inviting new members to join.
The UALink effort was initiated in May 2024, and seeks to define a high-speed, low-latency interconnect for scale-up communications between accelerators and switches in AI pods and clusters. The effort aims to create an open ecosystem and provide an alternative to Nvidia’s proprietary NVLink technology.
In addition, work is already under way by the Consortium to develop additional usage models for datacenter AI connectivity.
Existing Consortium board members include AMD, Amazon Web Services, Astera Labs, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft. They have now announced the incorporation of the Consortium, and are extending an invitation for membership to the wider industry to become “contributor members” who will help shape future UALink specifications.
The UALink 1.0 specification will enable up to 200 Gbps per lane scale-up connections for up to 1,024 accelerators within an AI pod. The specification will be available to contributor members this year, and will be available for general industry review in the first quarter of 2025, said the Consortium.
“The UALink standard defines high-speed and low-latency communication for scale-up AI systems in datacenters,” said Willie Nelson, president of the UALink Consortium. “Interested companies are encouraged to join as contributor members to support our mission, which is establishing an open and high-performance accelerator interconnect for AI workloads.”
Kurtis Bowman, chairman of the UALink Consortium, added: “The wider release of the UALink 1.0 specification in Q1 2025 represents an important milestone, as it will establish an open industry standard, enabling AI accelerators and switches to communicate more effectively, expand memory access to meet large AI model requirements, and demonstrate the benefits of industry collaboration.”
NVLink is Nvidia’s proprietary interconnect technology, which is being challenged by UALink and Ultra Ethernet.
