Large Tech computing firms shaped a consortium to outline a brand new open commonplace for interconnecting AI accelerators. NVIDIA was not invited to be a part of the group though it’s the largest provider of AI GPUs by far.
AI information facilities want to maneuver large quantities of knowledge with very low latency. Excessive-bandwidth information processing on GPUs occurs extraordinarily quick, however the problem is to switch information inside and between clusters of those AI accelerators inside information facilities.
NVIDIA created NVLink, its proprietary high-speed interconnect particularly designed for communication between its GPUs. The issue is that NVLink is proprietary, so it solely works with NVIDIA GPUs.
AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, Meta, and Microsoft introduced that they’ve shaped the Extremely Accelerator Hyperlink Promoter Group. The group goals to outline and promote an open commonplace known as Extremely Accelerator Hyperlink, or UALink.
The concept is to have UALink adopted by the business as the usual answer for high-bandwidth, low-latency information switch between AI accelerators in information facilities.
Comparable efforts to standardize protocols have been important for the tech business previously. As a result of now we have open requirements just like the PCI Bus, Ethernet, or TCP/IP, {hardware} and software program from completely different producers will be related to one another.
This can be a part of the rationale why NVIDIA wasn’t invited to the get together. If the consortium of tech firms can agree on an open business networking commonplace that isn’t influenced by NVIDIA’s tech then it may work to interrupt the close to monopoly NVIDIA appears to have.
AMD and Intel are direct opponents of NVIDIA within the GPU market, and Microsoft and Google are each creating their very own AI {hardware}.
“An business specification turns into vital to standardize the interface for AI and Machine Studying, HPC (high-performance computing), and Cloud purposes for the following technology of AI information facilities and implementations,” the consortium mentioned in an announcement.
Model 1.0 of UALink is anticipated to be prepared by Q3 2024 and might be made obtainable to firms that be a part of the Extremely Accelerator Hyperlink (UALink) Consortium.
The absence of NVIDIA doesn’t essentially imply they’re completely excluded. The consortium may resolve to welcome them sooner or later, and NVIDIA may select to undertake UALink if there’s widespread business acceptance.
