"Founded last year, with backing from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, Upscale is developing a new class of scale-up network switches specifically designed to compete with the NVSwitch chips found in Nvidia's NVL72 racks. NVLink is a high-speed interconnect technology that Nvidia developed to abstract memory and compute resources from multiple GPUs so they appear as a single logical resource. The tech debuted in 2024, and ever since, the likes of AMD and Cisco have tried to create alternatives."
"The startup isn't ready to reveal technical details about SkyHammer, but has said it will offer its first silicon as a standalone ASIC for hyperscale integration, and as an integrated switch blade and rack. While we don't have enough information about the chip to draw any comparisons to NVSwitch 6 or Broadcom's Tomahawk 6, Kar tells us it is using a memory semantic-based load-store network architecture, and will feature acceleration for collective communication similar to Nvidia's Sharp."
Upscale AI secured $200 million in Series A funding to develop scale-up network switches aimed at competing with Nvidia's NVSwitch chips in rack-scale AI systems. The company was founded last year with backing from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm and is building SkyHammer custom ASICs offered as standalone silicon and as integrated switch blades and racks for hyperscale deployment. SkyHammer uses a memory semantic-based load-store network architecture and includes acceleration for collective communication similar to Nvidia's Sharp. The platform will support AMD's UALink and the ESUN approach while targeting purpose-built AI workloads.
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