Establishing a Framework to Optimize Scale-up Interconnect for AI and HPC Clusters

DUBLIN, April 29, 2025 /CNW/ — Today, the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, and the Ultra Accelerator Link™ (UALink™) Consortium announced a new collaboration to enhance scale-up interconnect performance in AI clusters and High-Performance Computing (HPC). The UALink Consortium is developing an open industry standard for high-performance accelerated compute scale-up interconnects tailored for AI and HPC workloads, while the OCP Community is actively designing sustainable, large-scale data center infrastructure with a focus on Open Systems for AI. Together, OCP and UALink aim to integrate UALink’s scale-up AI interconnect technology into OCP Community-delivered AI clusters, providing the high-bandwidth, low-latency, low-power connectivity required for high-performance AI training and inference.

“The rapid adoption of AI across industries, from autonomous systems to enterprise analytics, is driving unprecedented demand for scalable, high-performance AI infrastructure. This has created a pivotal moment for data center investments, with hyperscale operators deploying large-scale AI clusters to meet these needs. By collaborating, the UALink Consortium and the OCP Community can shape system specifications to address critical challenges in interconnect bandwidth and scalability posed by advanced AI models,” said George Tchaparian, CEO at the OCP Foundation.

Key aspects of the collaboration will focus on aligning OCP’s community-led infrastructure development with UALink’s interconnect innovations, ensuring seamless integration and shared objectives. The alliance will leverage the expertise of both organizations to advance scale-up AI interconnect performance. Following the release of UALink 1.0 Specification earlier this month, both organizations and their communities are setting up for collaboration across OCP’s Open Systems for AI Strategic Initiative and OCP’s Future Technologies Initiative Short-Reach Optical Interconnect workstream.

“AI and HPC workloads require ultra-low latency and massive bandwidth to handle the scale and complexity of accelerated compute data processing to meet LLM requirements. The UALink Consortium was formed to create an open standard for accelerated compute interconnects that meets these demands, enabling faster and more efficient data exchange. Partnering with the OCP Community will accelerate the adoption of UALink’s innovations into complete systems, delivering transformative performance for AI markets,” said Peter Onufryk, UALink Consortium President.

“The surge in generative AI and HPC applications is placing immense pressure on data center interconnects to deliver the bandwidth and responsiveness needed for training and inference. The alliance between OCP and UALink creates a powerful collaborative framework to develop and integrate advanced interconnect solutions, enhancing the performance of large-scale AI clusters. This alliance has the potential to redefine industry solutions for AI infrastructure,” said Sameh Boujelbene, VP at Dell’Oro Group.

About the Open Compute Project Foundation
The Open Compute Project (OCP) brings at-scale innovations and hyperscaler best practices to all, spanning technology domains from the data center to the edge, and the technology stack from silicon, to systems, to site facilities and services. The international OCP Community is made up of organizations and people from hyperscale and tier-2 cloud data center operators, communications providers, colocation providers, diverse enterprises, and technology vendors. With the tenets of openness, impact, efficiency, scale and sustainability, the OCP engages and educates thousands of engineers every year. Across many projects and initiatives the OCP Foundation and Community are meeting the market today and shaping the future.

Learn more at: www.opencompute.org.

About Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium
The Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) Consortium, incorporated in October 2024, is the open industry standard group dedicated to developing the UALink specifications, a high-speed, scale-up accelerator interconnect technology that advances next-generation AI & HPC cluster performance. The consortium is led by a board made up of stalwarts of the industry; Alibaba, AMD, Apple, Astera Labs, AWS, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, and Synopsys. The Consortium develops technical specifications that facilitate breakthrough performance for emerging AI usage models while supporting an open ecosystem for data center accelerators. For more information on the UALink Consortium, please visit www.UALinkConsortium.org.

Ultra Accelerator Link and UALink are trademarks of the UALink Consortium. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Dirk Van Slyke
Open Compute Project Foundation
dirkv@opencompute.org
+1 303-999-7398

Nolan Morgan
UALink Consortium
+1 971-271-2657
press@members.ualinkconsortium.org 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/open-compute-project-foundation-and-ualink-consortium-announce-a-new-collaboration-302440947.html

SOURCE Open Compute Project Foundation

High-density infrastructure to be supported at atNorth’s FIN02 site in Helsinki.

HELSINKI, April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — atNorth, the leading Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider announced its plans to support Nokia’s cloud infrastructure with a multi megawatt deployment at its FIN02 site in Finland. The contract spans over 12 years and includes potential extensions totaling over 10MW.

Nokia, one of the world’s leading telecommunications and networking technology companies, is headquartered in Finland and has long utilized Finnish data centers, leveraging the country’s cool climate and renewable energy sources to ensure the sustainability of its workloads. In fact, the business was ranked as the most sustainable telecoms and communications company in the world earlier this year.

Nokia and atNorth have built a long-standing relationship through atNorth’s use of Nokia data center switches that power its HPCaaS offering, which currently runs from its data centers in Iceland and Sweden.

Well versed in the evolving data center landscape, Nokia was looking for a data center partner that could accommodate its high-density infrastructure needs without compromising its environmental credentials. The business required capacity suitable for high-density workloads of more than 130kw per rack, available at speed and with the potential for future scalability.

Located in Espoo, Greater Helsinki, atNorth’s newest data center, FIN02, runs on renewable energy and features robust power and liquid cooling capabilities. Built for scalability, its modular design supports high-performance workloads. A collaboration with Kesko Corporation enables waste heat recycling to heat a nearby store, further lowering its carbon footprint.

“atNorth was able to meet our complex technical requirements at speed without compromising on our sustainability goals,” said Marika Mentula, Vice President for Network Infrastructure North Europe at Nokia. “By helping support our cloud infrastructure at atNorth’s FIN02 data center, we can deliver high-performance infrastructure that supports our most demanding applications.”

“As the data center industry continues to grow at record speed, it’s clear that businesses are increasingly seeking the full package—sustainable, secure, infrastructure that can scale rapidly,” said Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth. “Our longstanding partnership with Nokia—rooted in the hardware demands of our HPCaaS offering and built on a shared commitment to sustainability—is a testament to that. It adds to a growing list of globally recognized companies that trust atNorth with their mission-critical data and rely on us to deliver best-in-class service.”

The news follows atNorth’s recent announcement of its heat reuse partnership with retail giant, Kesko Corporation at its FIN02 data center in Finland. The business has two other metro sites near Helsinki and a fourth ‘mega’ site is currently in development in Kouvola, that is expected to be operational by the end of 2025. 

About atNorth

atNorth is a leading Nordic data center services company that offers cost-effective, scalable colocation and high-performance computing services trusted by industry-leading organizations. The business acquired leading High Performance Computing (HPC) provider, Gompute, in 2023 enabling a compelling full stack offering tailored to AI and other critical high performance workloads.

With sustainability at its core, atNorth’s data centers run on renewable energy resources and support circular economy principles. All atNorth sites leverage innovative design, power efficiency, and intelligent operations to provide long-term infrastructure and flexible colocation deployments. The tailor-made solutions enable businesses to calculate, simulate, train and visualize data workloads in an efficient, cost-optimized way.

atNorth is headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland and operates eight data centers in strategic locations across the Nordics, with a site to open in Ballerup, Denmark in 2025, as well as its tenth under construction in Kouvola, Finland and its eleventh site in Ølgod, Denmark. The business has also secured land for a future mega site in the Sollefteå Municipality in Sweden.

For more information, visit atNorth.com or follow atNorth on LinkedIn or Facebook.

About Nokia

At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together. 

As a B2B technology innovation leader, we are pioneering networks that sense, think and act by leveraging our work across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. In addition, we create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs, which is celebrating 100 years of innovation.  

With truly open architectures that seamlessly integrate into any ecosystem, our high-performance networks create new opportunities for monetization and scale. Service providers, enterprises and partners worldwide trust Nokia to deliver secure, reliable and sustainable networks today – and work with us to create the digital services and applications of the future.

Press Contact:
Caroline Brunton
Kite Hill PR for atNorth
+44 (0) 7796 274 416
caroline@kitehillpr.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/atnorth/r/nokia-partners-with-atnorth-to-support-cloud-services-in-finland-,c4142023

The following files are available for download:

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/nokia-partners-with-atnorth-to-support-cloud-services-in-finland-302440998.html

Demand for Industrial Agentic AI Boosts Leadership in Industrial Software

LONDON, April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IFS, the leading provider of enterprise cloud and Industrial AI software, announces strong growth for the first quarter of 2025, ending March 31, 2025. Buoyed by increasing customer adoption and the transformative impact of IFS.ai, IFS’s market value now exceeds EUR 15 billion.

IFS Q1 2025 Key Financial Results:

Annual Recurring Revenue increased by 30% YoYCloud Revenue increased by 39% YoYRecurring Revenue share at 82%, increased by 24% YoY

Validation of IFS’s strategy has never been stronger, with IFS’s existing shareholders extending their commitment and new minority shareholders investing in the business. This will enable IFS to accelerate faster and capture more of the growing opportunity that Industrial AI presents.

Customer demand for IFS’s industrial application of generative and agentic AI is soaring, thanks to the ease of which IFS.ai can be adopted and deployed, as well as the rapid value it delivers. IFS customers are not simply piloting AI, they are operationalizing it at scale, unlocking productivity, business resilience and strategic growth.

Over 50 new organizations became IFS customers in Q1, including global brands such as Total Energies, ArcelorMittal Projects Europe BV, Collins Aerospace, Goodyear and Hitachi Energy.

IFS recently announced IFS Nexus Black™, a strategic innovation program to expedite high-impact AI adoption for industrial organizations. Partnering with customers to solve bespoke, complex challenges in asset-intensive industries, IFS Nexus Black™ enables rapid development and deployment of AI capabilities to turn bold ideas into tangible outcomes in a matter of weeks.

“IFS is creating real market momentum thanks to more and more of the world’s most respected industrial companies embedding IFS.ai into the very fabric of their operations and business processes,” said IFS CEO, Mark Moffat. “This growth reaffirms our market leadership in mission critical areas of Enterprise Asset Management and Field Service Management.”

“The development of IFS Nexus Black demonstrates our relentless commitment to innovation for customers. This is a true catalyst for accelerated AI value creation, designed exclusively for the complex needs of the industrial enterprise.”

IFS Chief Financial Officer, Matthias Heiden, said: “Now, more than ever, businesses understand that an adaptable technology stack is crucial for resilience in the face of global financial instability, reflected in our Annual Recurring Revenue increasing by 30% year-on-year. IFS is leaving no stone unturned for our industrial customers, delivering agile solutions and providing them with the tools to drive efficiencies across their business.”

Recent Highlights:

IFS appointed as an Advisory Board Member of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on AI, an evidence-based forum debating AI policy and governance at the highest levels.IFS the only company named as a Customers’ Choice in the 2025 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Enterprise Asset Management Software report.IFS named a leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Manufacturing ERP Applications 2024–2025 Vendor AssessmentIFS named a leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Remanufacturing Management Software 2024 Vendor AssessmentIFS signs strategic agreement with SBM to highlight commitment to growth in Saudi Arabia.

IFS Press Contact:
Adam Gillbe
IFS, Director of Corporate & Executive Communications
Email: adam.gillbe@ifs.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com.

https://news.cision.com/ifs/r/ifs-accelerates-industrial-ai-revolution–q1-arr-up-30–valuation-surges-to-eur-15-billion,c4142499

The following files are available for download:

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/ifs-accelerates-industrial-ai-revolution-q1-arr-up-30-valuation-surges-to-eur-15-billion-302441005.html