Huawei announced the launch of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip, originally planned for Q3 2027, will now occur in the first quarter of 2027, the company said. It is the company's first major AI chip update since the release of the Ascend 960 series.
Huawei reported the Ascend 960DT is expected to double the performance of its predecessor, measured on AI training benchmarks. That compares with the earlier figure of performance improvements from the Ascend 960 series.
The Ascend 960DT is built on Huawei's Peerium Computing Architecture and targets large-scale AI computing systems designed for both training and inference. Availability begins in Q1 2027, initially for enterprise and research clients.
"The Ascend 960DT is expected to be ready in Q1 2027. Ascend 960 chips are launching ahead of schedule, doubling performance and advancing year by year," said a Huawei spokesperson. The company is using its new Peerium Computing Architecture to build larger AI computing systems designed for both training and inference.
The announcement follows a week before U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet on September 24 in Washington, DC. Huawei is trying to turn hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of AI chips into one giant computer.
Huawei did not say how the Atlas 950 SuperPoD will scale beyond 4,096 Ascend 960 chips, and the company faces questions about its broader AI systems. The company says an Atlas 950 SuperCluster can connect up to 256,000 accelerator cards.
Source: techcrunch
