Huawei accelerates AI chip launch to compete with Nvidia

Huawei has accelerated the development of its new artificial intelligence chip, the Ascend 960DT, moving its expected launch forward to the first quarter of 2027. This announcement, made during the Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai, shortens the previous timeline by approximately six months and positions the company as a direct competitor to Nvidia in the AI training and inference market.

Rotating Chairman David Wang confirmed the timeline for the Ascend 960DT and noted that the company plans to release the Ascend 960PR in the third quarter of 2027, with subsequent generations planned for 2028 and 2029. To compete with advanced semiconductors restricted by U.S. trade controls, Huawei is developing the Peerium architecture. This system utilizes UnifiedBus technology to connect processors, memory, and storage, aiming to scale up to one million processors working as a single computing system.

Currently, an Atlas 950 SuperCluster featuring 256,000 boards is being deployed, while the Atlas 960 system is undergoing testing.