May 30 (Reuters) - Major tech firms, including Meta

, Microsoft ( MSFT ), Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) and

Broadcom ( AVGO ), said on Thursday they have developed a new

industry standard for networking in AI data centers, the latest

effort to break the dominance of market leader Nvidia ( NVDA ).

The "Ultra Accelerator Link," is an attempt to establish

an open standard for communication between artificial

intelligence accelerators - systems that can help process the

vast amounts of data employed in AI tasks.

Other members include Alphabet-owned Google,

Cisco System, Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE ) and

Intel ( INTC ).

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Nvidia ( NVDA ), the biggest player in the AI chip market with a

share of around 80%, is not part of the grouping.

Tech giants like Google and Meta are keen to reduce

their dependence on Nvidia ( NVDA ), whose networking business forms an

essential part of the package that enables its AI dominance.

Broadcom's ( AVGO ) central rival in the networking and custom chip

market - Marvell Technologies ( MRVL ), is also not part of the

group.

KEY QUOTE

"An industry specification becomes critical to standardize

the interface for AI and Machine Learning, HPC (high-performance

computing), and Cloud applications for the next generation of AI

data centers and implementations," the companies said in a

statement.

CONTEXT

Tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into the

hardware required to support AI applications, boosting demand

for AI data centers and the chips that they run on.

The Ultra Accelerator Link group has designed specifications

governing connections among different accelerators in a data

center.

The specifications will be available in the third quarter of

2024 to companies that join the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink)

Consortium.

THE RESPONSE

A spokesperson for Nvidia ( NVDA ) declined to comment. Marvell ( MRVL ) did

not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.