The AI Platform Alliance has added 21 new members, including cloud managed service providers, system suppliers and integrators, and independent software vendors (ISVs) to its membership which up to now largely comprised AI accelerator suppliers. The new tranche of members has roughly trebled the Alliance's membership.
The Ampere-led Alliance was formed a year ago at the Open Compute Project conference.
"The goal of the AI Platform Alliance is to develop enterprise-grade AI inference solutions that are open, economical and sustainable," Ampere's Jeff Wittich told EE Times. "The addition of cloud and system suppliers, systems integrators, and ISVs and MSPs [managed service providers], along with our growing number of accelerator partners, gives us the full-stack ecosystem we need in order to fully bring these solutions to market."
Single-vendor solutions are often proprietary, Wittich said, but interoperability is an important aspect of the Alliance's ecosystem.
"We are building open AI platforms that include technologies from multiple parties that can be easily deployed and are utilizing industry specifications," he said, adding that one member of the Alliance is also focusing on future standards, including chiplet standards.
The Alliance also unveiled a new online marketplace, where each of the solutions available involves at least two AI technologies from different members.
"The marketplace makes these solutions more accessible to potential users," Wittich said. "[Solutions] could take the form of a complete physical system but could also be cloud- or software-based, and they have been tested for a defined use case."
Edge AI chip supplier Kinara has been an Alliance member from the start and has added its ARA-1 and ARA-2 cards to the new online marketplace.
"Very few companies have the expertise to organically source full-stack solutions," Kinara CEO Ravi Annavajjhala told EE Times. "Therefore, partnerships among specialized hardware and software vendors are needed. The AI Alliance provides a forum for collaboration among partner vendors."
New member Untether AI's AI accelerator cards are already available on the marketplace. The AI Platform Alliance is another platform for Untether AI's ongoing integration with the Arm ecosystem, where it already has partnerships in the automotive and data center segments, Untether AI's VP of product, Bob Beachler, told EE Times.
"We want to make it simple for our customers to accelerate solution deployment," he said. "Working with the AIPA ecosystem and complementary technology partners, we can ensure interoperability. It's really about choice: The AIPA provides a mechanism for a marketplace of AI inference-focused solutions."
Joining the marketplace involved porting Untether AI's runtime software to Arm-based CPUs, tuning its performance and testing it. This software is included in the latest release of the company's imAIgine SDK, and Untether AI was at the Yotta show in Las Vegas this week demoing its cards with various Ampere-based motherboards, Beachler added.
AI Platform Alliance members will continue to work together to validate joint AI solutions to provide an alternative to GPUs for AI workloads, aiming to accelerate innovation and boost transparency. The ultimate aim is faster adoption of environmentally friendly and socially responsible infrastructure at scale.
Joining the AI Platform Alliance are ADLink, ASRock Rack, ASA Computers, Canonical, Clairo.ai, Deepgram, DeepX, ECS/Equus, Giga Computing (Gigabyte), Kamiwaza.ai, Lampi.ai, NETINT, NextComputing, opsZero, Positron, Prov.net/Alpha3, Responsible Compute, Supermicro, Untether AI, View IO and Wallaroo.ai. These companies join founding members Ampere Computing, Cerebras Systems, Furiosa, Graphcore, Kalray, Kinara, Luminous, Neuchips, Rebellions and Sapeon.