Apple joins Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium to help develop next-gen AI data center tech

Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium (UALink) has announced the expansion of its Board of Directors with the election of Alibaba Cloud Computing, Apple, and Synopsys. The new Board members will leverage their industry knowledge to advance development and industry adoption of UALink – a high-speed, scale-up interconnect for next-generation AI cluster performance.
“Alibaba Cloud believes that driving AI computing accelerator scale-up interconnection technology by defining core needs and solutions from the perspective of cloud computing and applications has significant value in building the competitiveness of intelligent computing supernodes,” said Qiang Liu, VP of Alibaba Cloud, GM of Alibaba Cloud Server Infrastructure, in a statement. “The UALink consortium, as a leader in the interconnect field of AI accelerators, has brought together key members from the AI infrastructure industry to work together to define interconnect protocol which is natively designed for AI accelerators, driving innovation in AI infrastructure. This will strongly promote the innovation of AI infrastructure and improve the execution efficiency of AI workloads, contributing to the establishment of an open and innovative industry ecosystem.”
“UALink shows great promise in addressing connectivity challenges and creating new opportunities for expanding AI capabilities and demands,” said Becky Loop, Director of Platform Architecture at Apple, in a statement. “Apple has a long history of pioneering and collaborating on innovations that drive our industry forward, and we’re excited to join the UALink Board of Directors.”
“UALink will be critical in addressing the performance and bandwidth communication demands of hyperscale data centers, enabling the high-speed interconnects needed to scale up pods and clusters,” said Richard Solomon, UALink Board Member and Sr. Staff Product Manager, Synopsys, in a statement. “As the leading provider of best-in-class interface IP solutions, Synopsys is committed to contributing our expertise to the UALink Consortium to develop high-speed standards enabling the world’s fastest AI accelerator architectures.”
“We are pleased to welcome Alibaba, Apple and Synopsys to the UALink Consortium Board of Directors,” said Kurtis Bowman, UALink Consortium Board Chair, in a statement. “Since our incorporation, the Consortium has grown to more than 65 total members, spanning Cloud, Silicon and IP Providers, Software Companies, System OEMs and others. The continued support for the Consortium will help accelerate adoption of this key industry standard, defining the next-generation interconnect for AI workloads.”
Anticipated for release during the first quarter of 2025, the UALink 1.0 Specification will enable up to 200Gbps per lane scale-up connection for up to 1024 accelerators within an AI pod.
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MacDailyNews Note: The Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium, founded in May 2024, is an open industry standard group dedicated to developing the UALink specifications, a high-speed, scale-up accelerator interconnect technology that advances next-generation AI cluster performance. Incorporated in October 2024 by AMD, Astera Labs, AWS, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft, the Consortium aims to develop technical specifications that facilitate breakthrough performance for emerging AI usage models while supporting an open ecosystem for data center accelerators. More info here: www.UALinkConsortium.org.

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