[TECH TOPIC] UALink driver upstreaming

["Sinyuk, Konstantin" <konstantin.sinyuk@intel.com>]

Hi All,

The UALink Consortium is defining an open, vendor‑neutral interconnect aimed
at scaling AI workloads with low‑latency, memory‑semantic communication
beyond PCIe. Unlike proprietary solutions such as NVLink (NVIDIA) or
Infinity Fabric (AMD), UALink is a cross‑vendor standard and was recently
recognized at FMS 2025.

I would like to present a proposal on what UALink support could look like in
the upstream Linux kernel.

Key areas for discussion:
- Core driver design: proposed start under drivers/misc/ual/ for discovery,
  topology, and resource management.
- Memory semantics: same‑OS and multi‑OS rack scenarios, leveraging dma_buf,
  HMM, and NUMA.
- Control path: AUX bus for vendor extensions, offloading real‑time sequences
  to device microcontrollers, generic UALink interface.
- Security: confidential compute support and a userspace daemon for topology
  and authentication.
- Upstreaming strategy: begin with a minimal core driver, then incrementally
  extend toward MM integration, dma_buf support, security, and
  cross‑subsystem work.

The goal is to decide how UALink should be represented as a first‑class
interconnect in Linux, complementing CXL while remaining vendor‑neutral,
ABI‑stable, and maintainable.

Best Regards,
Konstantin Sinyuk
Habana Labs Gaudi driver maintainer

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