An Interview with Synopsys
By: Kent Lusted, Distinguished Architect at Synopsys
The UALink Consortium was formed to develop interconnect technical specifications that facilitate direct load, store, and atomic operations between AI Accelerators.
We recently met with UALink Board Member Synopsys to discuss the benefits of UALink – an open specification that defines low latency, high-bandwidth interconnect for communication between accelerators and switches in AI computing pods. Continue reading our blog for highlights from our conversation.
Q: What is the importance of an open ecosystem?
An open ecosystem is vital to facilitate rapid growth because it empowers a range of companies to engage and sustain the growth in a free market space. This dynamic competition enriches the industry by providing diverse choices and a wide selection of solutions, ultimately lowering costs for the end user. Additionally, an open ecosystem fosters innovation and collaboration, enabling companies to optimize the key solution parameters that are most important to them, such as cost, latency, availability, or unique features. The companies can then tailor their offerings to meet specific industry needs.
Q: Why did your company join the UALink Consortium?
Synopsys joined the UALink Consortium to address the needs of our leading-edge customers by providing a complete UALink IP solution that enables open and scalable systems, essential for AI workloads. As a Promoter member, we are committed to shaping the direction of scale-up fabrics to meet the demands of AI and HPC designers, system architects and operators. We believe in supporting open industry standards to enable innovation and provide cutting-edge solutions to empower our customers to achieve their goals efficiently and effectively.
Q: How does UALink technology enhance AI workloads?
UALink technology optimizes AI workloads by enhancing existing interconnects, such as Ethernet and PCIe®. These improvements reduce latency and support transport protocols tailored to the specific requirements of AI workloads in data centers, including inference, ranking and recommendation, and generative AI. Additionally, UALink introduces extensions focused on accelerator-to-accelerator scale-up interconnects, delivering maximum performance and highly efficient systems.
Q: What are some use cases for UALink technology?
The primary use case for UALink technology is accelerator-to-accelerator interconnects within a scale-up domain – a domain where the accelerators are very close in physical proximity. UALink provides flexibility and efficiency to handle connections within the scale-up domain, ensuring optimal performance and resource utilization.