Tech giants including Intel and Google formed group to develop UALink, a new GPU interconnect standard competing with Nvidia's NVLink.

On Thursday, several major tech companies—Google, Intel, Microsoft, Meta, AMD, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Cisco, and Broadcom—announced the formation of the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Promoter Group to develop a new interconnect standard for AI accelerator chips in data centers. The group aims to create an alternative to Nvidia's proprietary NVLink interconnect technology, which links together multiple servers that power today's AI applications like ChatGPT. The interconnect is critical infrastructure: GPUs perform massive numbers of matrix multiplications necessary for running neural network architecture in parallel, but complex AI systems require multiple GPUs to work together, and these interconnects enable faster data transfer and communication between the accelerators, allowing them to operate more efficiently on tasks like training large AI models.

Control of the link standard represents significant market power, as whoever establishes it can effectively dictate which hardware tech companies will use. The UALink group seeks to establish an open standard that allows multiple companies to contribute and develop AI hardware advancements instead of being locked into Nvidia's proprietary ecosystem. This approach mirrors other open standards such as Compute Express Link (CXL), created by Intel in 2019, which provides high-speed, high-capacity connections between CPUs and devices or memory in data centers. The move reflects a broader pattern: in December, IBM and Meta, along with over 50 other organizations, formed an "AI Alliance" to promote open AI models and offer an alternative to closed AI systems like those from OpenAI and Google.

UALink 1.0, the first version of the proposed standard, is designed to connect up to 1,024 GPUs within a single computing "pod," defined as one or several server racks. The standard is based on technologies like AMD's Infinity Architecture and is expected to improve speed and reduce data transfer latency compared to existing interconnect specifications. The group intends to form the UALink Consortium later in 2024 to manage ongoing development, with member companies gaining access to UALink 1.0 upon joining and a higher-bandwidth version, UALink 1.1, planned for release in Q4 2024. The first UALink products are expected to be available within the next two years.

Nvidia, the current market leader in AI chips, has not joined the new UALink Promoter Group. The company's recent massive financial success puts it in a strong position to continue forging its own path. However, as major tech companies continue to invest in their own AI chip development, the need for a standardized interconnect technology becomes more pressing, particularly as a means to counter or at least balance Nvidia's influence in the growing AI data center market.