UALink releases inaugural GPU interconnect specification

UALink’s primary target for now is to provide an alternative to Nvdia’s high-bandwidth, low-latency, direct interconnect technology for CPU, GPU-to-GPU connectivity, NVLink. NVLink is primarily used in InfiniBand-based networks.

Given the spec’s Ethernet heritage, UALink is seen in most circles as working hand-in-hand with the Ultra Ethernet Consortium to help expand the massive Ethernet community with AI technology reinforcements. Many members of the UALink group are also developing UEC specifications which are aimed at developing physical, link, transport and software layer Ethernet advances for the AI connectivity arena.

“UALink is at the vanguard of innovation in the artificial intelligence and machine learning domains, providing an open ecosystem path to a dedicated accelerator interconnect leveraging the ubiquitous Ethernet ecosystem,” the UALink group wrote. “By incorporating UALink Switches, accelerators with UALink capability, can expand the scale‐up domain, creating ultra‐high bandwidth multi‐node accelerator pods. UALink also enables a simple software model by supporting load/store operations across an entire pod of up to 1024 accelerators.”

Now a market around UALink needs to develop to be a true alternative to Nvidia. Currently, only UALink member Synopsys has an actual UALink-based product – it rolled out a UALink IP controller, PHY, and verification IP package late last year. Other members are expected to follow suit.

“With the release of the UALink 200G 1.0 Specification, the UALink Consortium’s member companies are actively building an open ecosystem for scale-up accelerator connectivity,” said Peter Onufryk, UALink Consortium president, in a statement. “We are excited to witness the variety of solutions that will soon be entering the market and enabling future AI applications.”