The Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation and the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Alliance today announced a partnership to enhance the vertical scaling interconnect performance for AI clusters and high-performance computing (HPC). The UALink Alliance is developing open standards for accelerated computing interconnects tailored for AI and HPC workloads, while the OCP community is focused on designing sustainable large-scale data center infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on open AI systems. The collaboration aims to integrate UALink's AI interconnect technology into AI clusters provided by the OCP community, meeting the high bandwidth, low latency, and low power consumption connection requirements for high-performance AI training and inference.
OCP Foundation CEO George Tchaparian said: "From autonomous driving to enterprise analytics, the rapid proliferation of AI has created an unprecedented demand for scalable high-performance AI infrastructure. By partnering with the UALink Alliance, we will jointly develop system specifications to address the key challenges of interconnect bandwidth and scalability for advanced AI models." The collaboration will focus on aligning the infrastructure development led by the OCP community with UALink's interconnect innovations, ensuring seamless integration and unified objectives. Both parties will leverage their respective expertise to enhance AI interconnect performance, collaborating within the OCP's Open AI System Strategic Initiative and the Short-Reach Optical Interconnect Technology Working Group.
UALink Alliance Chairman Peter Onufryk noted: "AI and HPC workloads require ultra-low latency and high bandwidth to handle the scale and complexity of accelerated computing data processing. Partnering with the OCP community will accelerate the system-level application of UALink's innovative technologies, bringing transformative performance to the AI market." Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President of Dell'Oro Group, commented: "The surge in generative AI and HPC applications has placed higher demands on data center interconnects, and the alliance between OCP and UALink has established a robust framework for developing advanced interconnect solutions."
About the Open Compute Project Foundation
The OCP is committed to extending hyperscale innovation practices across the entire technology spectrum from data centers to the edge. Its international community members include cloud operators, communication service providers, colocation suppliers, and technology vendors. The foundation annually cultivates thousands of engineers through open, efficient, and sustainable projects.
About the UALink Alliance
Established in October 2024, the alliance is composed of industry-leading companies such as Alibaba, AMD, and Apple. It focuses on developing new-generation interconnect technology standards for AI and HPC clusters, supporting an open ecosystem for data center accelerators.
Original Link: https://www.opencompute.org/blog/open-compute-project-foundation-and-ualinktm-consortium-announce-a-new-collaboration
