Emergence Of UALink As A Viable Alternative Could Challenge Nvidia's Dominance, Analyst Asserts

Group 1 - BofA Securities highlighted two key AI scale-up interconnect protocols: Nvidia's NVLink Fusion and AMD's UALink, which are essential for connecting AI accelerators through fast, low-latency networking [1] - UALink is an open-standard initiative aimed at providing an alternative to Nvidia's proprietary NVLink, formed by a consortium of industry leaders including AMD, Broadcom, Intel, and others [2][3] - UALink is seen as a significant step for the non-Nvidia ecosystem, potentially challenging Nvidia's dominance in AI scale-up from 2027 onward [4] Group 2 - Nvidia's NVLink Fusion has opened up approximately $12 billion in networking total addressable market (TAM) that was previously inaccessible, with AMD being a founding member of the UALink Consortium [5] - UALink 1.0 supports up to 800GB/s bandwidth per accelerator, which is less than half of NVLink 5.0's 1.8TB/s [6] - Nvidia is expected to maintain a 1-2 generation advantage in AI scale-up networking as UALink-compatible systems ramp from 2027 [7] Group 3 - NVLink Fusion is projected to expand Nvidia's TAM in networking associated with custom accelerators, with custom silicon representing about 15% of the estimated $500 billion AI compute TAM by 2029-30 [8] - The emergence of UALink as an open standard backed by major industry players is crucial for fostering innovation and competition in the AI interconnect space [10] - The coming years, particularly 2026 and beyond, will be critical for observing UALink's adoption and Nvidia's evolution of its proprietary technology [10]