Apple strengthens commitment in the AI consortium UALink

Apple has joined the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium, an initiative for developing new technologies to connect chips in AI data centers. The aim of this consortium is to create a standard called UALink to connect accelerator chips in the growing number of server farms. Alongside Apple, Alibaba and the semiconductor company Synopsys are also represented on the board. Becky Loop, Director of Platform Architecture at Apple, highlights that UALink offers promising solutions for connectivity challenges and opens up new possibilities for expanding AI capabilities. "Apple has a long history of pioneering and collaborating on innovations that drive our industry forward," said Loop. "We are excited to join the UALink board." UALink is set to connect chips from GPUs to custom solutions to accelerate the training, fine-tuning, and operation of AI models. The first products based on open standards like AMD's Infinity Fabric are expected to hit the market in the coming years. Members of the UALink consortium include Intel, AMD, Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Meta. Nvidia, the world's largest manufacturer of AI accelerators, is not part of the consortium as it offers its own proprietary technology with NVLink. Apple's entry into UALink coincides with the company's increasing investments in infrastructure to support Apple Intelligence. According to media reports, Apple is developing a new server chip to improve the efficiency of its AI data centers. Some features of Apple Intelligence met with mixed responses. For instance, one feature, AI-generated news summaries, was updated after user complaints about faulty headlines, including the claim that tennis player Rafael Nadal is gay.