Huawei Unveils New Ascend Chips and World's First AI SuperPod in 2026
Huawei has announced plans to unveil a series of new Ascend chips, including the 950, 960, and 970, along with the release of the world's first general-purpose computing SuperPod, the TaiShan 950, in early 2026.
The Ascend 950 series promises significant improvements in performance and interconnect bandwidth. The 950 chips will boast an impressive 2 TB/s interconnect bandwidth, a 2.5-fold increase from the current Ascend 910C. Looking ahead to late 2028, the Ascend 970 will offer an even more robust 4 TB/s interconnect bandwidth and deliver 8 PFLOPs of FP4 performance.
Huawei will also launch the TaiShan 950 SuperPod in early 2026, a first-of-its-kind general-purpose computing SuperPod. Manufactured by Huawei themselves, these supernodes will be based on their powerful Ascend 950 AI chips. Additionally, two Kunpeng 950 processors for general computing will be released in early 2026, featuring 96 or 192 cores and 192 or 384 threads.
The Ascend 960, slated for Q4 2027, will double the computing power and memory access bandwidth of the 950. The Ascend 950, set to launch in Q1 2026, will offer enhanced vector processing and granular memory access, handling 128 byte chunks. Later in the year, Atlas 950 SuperPods will hit the market, providing nearly seven times the processing power of NVIDIA's NVL144. Furthermore, the Ascend 950PR and 950TO, supporting low-precision data formats like FP8, will deliver up to 2 PFLOPs of performance, with the 950PR available in Q1 2026 and the 950DT following in Q4.
Huawei's upcoming Ascend chip series and SuperPods promise significant advancements in AI processing power and interconnect bandwidth. With releases scheduled throughout 2026 and beyond, these innovations are set to shape the future of high-performance computing.
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