The New Era Needs a New Network

• Deliver a complete architecture that optimizes Ethernet for high performance AI and HPC networking, exceeding the performance of today’s specialized technologies.  UEC specifically focuses on functionality, performance, TCO, and developer and end-user friendliness, while minimizing changes to only those required and maintaining Ethernet interoperability.
• Additional goals: 
  • Improved bandwidth, latency, tail latency, and scale, matching tomorrow’s workloads and compute architectures.
  • Backwards compatibility to widely-deployed APIs and definition of new APIs that are better optimized to future workloads and compute architectures.

1. How does UEC differ from what is available today in Ethernet?  AI and HPC workloads present new challenges to the network such as the need for higher scale, higher bandwidth density, multi-pathing, fast reaction to congestion, and inter-dependency on the progress of individual flows (where tail latency is the figure of merit). UEC specifications will be designed to bridge these gaps and provide the increased scale required by these workloads.  UEC is targeting a complete communications stack, addressing technical issues that traverse many protocol layers and delivering ease of configuration and management.
2. How does UEC differ from what is available today in with other protocols?  Existing protocols may address some of the above aspects (e.g., older era congestion management), but since they were designed for general purpose networks, they lack functionality critical to AI and HPC such multi pathing and ease of configuration.  Existing protocols may also be brittle in the scenarios of interest. Together with the vast UEC members’ experience with AI and HPC workloads deployed at scale, UEC will provide a compelling, well rounded solution ushering in new hardware and software products not available with Ethernet or any other networking technology today!

1. HPC at scale
2. AI at scale (“GPU scale-out network”)
3. Cloud AI and HPC

It is the intention of UEC to fully engage with the relevant SDOs (Standards Development Organizations) to make UEC technology an official element of the broadly deployed family of Ethernet based technologies and products.

UEC will engage in technology conferences, webinars, and liaisons with relevant SDOs.  UEC may also pursue compliance and interop programs.

Any organization, vendor or implementor who develops hardware or software for AI and HPC or runs these workloads and would like to contribute to or take advantage of the Ethernet ecosystem as enhanced by UEC.

Yes, UEC has steering members, general members, and contributors. More information can be found further down this page.

UEC is organized as part of the Linux Foundation JDF and enjoys the status of an International Standards Organization (ISO). UEC has members that are multinational and are centered outside of the United States. UEC will be open to global participation.

UEC technical specifications and supporting documentation are publicly available on the UEC website. The current release, UE Specification 1.1, is available for download.

Additional specifications and supporting documents are available in the Technical Publications section. Information about previous releases is available in the Specification History section.

More information is available by subscribing on the UEC website (ultraethernet.org).

Product availability and implementation timelines vary by manufacturer. For information about products incorporating UEC technologies, please consult participating vendors and their official product announcements.

Buying UEC-compliant products will be similar to the ways Ethernet-based prodcuts are procured today. Existing and future UEC members have well established routes to market to allow interested parties to buy UEC compliant equipment when available.

There are multiple advantages. One of the key advantages is that UEC compliant Ethernet based equipment will be available from an open ecosystem of manufacturers.