Sideband Synchronization Protocol for Multi-Vendor Pools
Vendor-neutral phase-and-clock signaling between accelerators in a pluggable fabric. Designed for the rented-pool case, not the captive-rack case.
Mechanism
Vendor-neutral phase-and-clock signaling between accelerators in a pluggable fabric. The substrate primitive, an electrically distinct sideband path with hysteretic occupancy-driven phase correction, is described in Infinity (US Prov. 64/055,093) as a digital logic device. This research line is the protocol-layer companion: how the sideband signal is encoded, timed, and validated when the accelerators on each end of the fabric come from different vendors and the pool is shared rather than dedicated. The captive-rack case (single-vendor NVLink fabric) does not need a vendor-neutral protocol. The rented-pool case (multi-tenant cloud-edge or DePIN-style fabric) does.
Why this matters
- UALink Common Specification 2.0 (May 2026 update) targets the multi-vendor pool case directly. Sideband-protocol research is architecturally adjacent to UALink and informs a Standard-Essential-Patent posture conditional on counsel sign-off on SEP scope.
- The captive-rack-versus-rented-pool distinction is load-bearing. Phase-correction signaling that assumes a single-vendor PHY does not generalize to a vendor-mixed pool. The protocol-layer work characterizes which sideband-signaling decisions stay vendor-neutral (encoding, framing, watchdog semantics, quorum-exclusion behavior under degraded membership) and which collapse into vendor-specific PHY assumptions (electrical sideband selection, doorbell-register layout, virtual-channel arbitration).
- Status is Research. The companion filing (Infinity) is at the apparatus layer. The protocol layer is forward-looking research, deliberately staged behind the apparatus claim set rather than bundled with it.
Status and what's next
Active research. UALink Consortium engagement target 2026-07-30 (90 days post-Infinity-filing). The filing decision on the protocol layer is deferred pending standardization-track developments and counsel sign-off on Standard-Essential-Patent scope. We do not want to file a protocol claim set that prematurely commits to a PHY-specific embodiment, nor one that overlaps the Infinity apparatus claims in a way that would dilute either anchor.