[dead]
Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#12Ethernet but for AI!
Ethernet + AI
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#13While currently it seems like the only (?) InfiniBand vendor is Nvida/Mellanox, there used to be more folks selling the gear. For example Intel used to sell switches (had some for an Isilon backend):
* https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/ne... (PDF)
Officially there are a bunch of folks in the IB alliance:
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#14Ethernet but for AI!
UltraEthernet predates the AI boom. I don't blame them for adding the AI buzzwords, for this to succeed people need to think about it in the same vein as IB/RoCE/etc and a lot of the decision makers are unfortunately not technical enough to understand what this is or does.
Ultimately it's just a different (IMO slightly more refined) look at how to support RDMA on Ethernet vs RoCE which is a more ham fisted implementation.
RoCE took an encapsulation approach that has some drawbacks (namely it's reliance on PFC/ECN for congestion management).
This takes a different approach that attempts to actually do first-class re-implementations of Infiniband-ish congestion control with end-to-end credit based flow control similar to Infiniband virtual lanes.
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#15Ethernet but for AI!
UltraEthernet predates the AI boom. I don't blame them for adding the AI buzzwords, for this to succeed people need to think about it in the same vein as IB/RoCE/etc and a lot of the decision makers are unfortunately not technical enough to understand what this is or does. Ultimately it's just a different (IMO slightly more refined) look at how to support RDMA on Ethernet vs RoCE which is a more ham fisted implementa…
> UltraEthernet predates the AI boom.
UEC was formed/announced in July 2023:
* https://ultraethernet.org/leading-cloud-service-semiconducto...
ChatGPT was launched in November 2022:
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
UltraEthernet predates the AI boom. I don't blame them for adding the AI buzzwords, for this to succeed people need to think about it in the same vein as IB/RoCE/etc and a lot of the decision makers are unfortunately not technical enough to understand what this is or does. Ultimately it's just a different (IMO slightly more refined) look at how to support RDMA on Ethernet vs RoCE which is a more ham fisted implementa…
> UltraEthernet predates the AI boom. UEC was formed/announced in July 2023: * https://ultraethernet.org/leading-cloud-service-semiconducto... ChatGPT was launched in November 2022: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4
[deleted]
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#17While currently it seems like the only (?) InfiniBand vendor is Nvida/Mellanox, there used to be more folks selling the gear. For example Intel used to sell switches (had some for an Isilon backend): * https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/ne... (PDF) Officially there are a bunch of folks in the IB alliance: * https://www.infinibandta.org/member-listing/
Intel's Omni-Path was very similar but a little different from Infiniband. Anyone remember any details on how; I'm forgetting?
Omni-Path was sold off to Cornelis Networks in 2020. Cornelis just released new 400Gbps products last week, their CN5000 line, with 48 and 576 port switches. https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-spins-...
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#18Their press release regarding today’s announcement of the finalized 1.0 specification is at:
https://ultraethernet.org/ultra-ethernet-consortium-uec-laun...
Their noteworthy features list is:
> Modern RDMA for Ethernet and IP – Supporting intelligent, low-latency transport for high-throughput environments.
> Open Standards and Interoperability – Avoids vendor lock-in while accelerating ecosystem-wide innovation.
> End-to-End Scalability – From routing and provisioning to operations and testing, UEC scales to millions of endpoints.
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#19While currently it seems like the only (?) InfiniBand vendor is Nvida/Mellanox, there used to be more folks selling the gear. For example Intel used to sell switches (had some for an Isilon backend): * https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/ne... (PDF) Officially there are a bunch of folks in the IB alliance: * https://www.infinibandta.org/member-listing/
[deleted]
Re: Ultra Ethernet Specification v1.0 [pdf]
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
That so much of the document is about how UltaEthernet maps to Libfabric rather confirms that premise! There's also a credit based flow system, and connection manager roles, which are also easily identifiable Infiniband concepts. I'm interested to see what the optional hardware features are. And what their relationship is to the different UE profiles (AI Base, AI Full, and HPC). > The Ultra Ethernet Transport (UET) l…
Self-admittedly less knowledgeable about this subject, but how does this differ from IBoE?
The end of the quote I provided does some very high level contrasting of the well known RoCE v2 RDMA over converged Ethernet, which is the most popular IBoE like thing.
I'm sure there's a lot more nuanced to it all. But I think predictability/utilization/latency in RoCE are worse, that it relies on Explicit Congestion Notification more for flow control. Where-as UE is using Infiniband style credit based flow control, which should insure that any data sent has sufficient throughout allocated to it to be received.
UE seems to be a more direct creation of an Infiniband like network, atop Ethernet but where all players are agreeing to behave in an Infiniband like way with Infiniband predictability, where-as RoCE encapsulates Infiniband data but still behaves more like an Ethernet network lacking the coordination of Infiniband. I'm far from certain; it'd be so fun to have some extensive material to go over to really find out.