Huawei has announced a new line of powerful chips designed to push the limits of computing performance. Revealed during its Huawei Connect 2025 event in Shanghai, these chips aim to equip the world’s most demanding data centers and clusters with unprecedented processing capabilities. The company’s latest advancements mark a major step forward in high-performance computing technology.

Introducing the Ascend 950 Series

The first chips to hit the market from Huawei’s new lineup are the Ascend 950PR and 950TO. These chips are built to support advanced data formats like FP8, which enables a performance level of one PFLOP, or one thousand trillion floating-point calculations per second. They also support MXFP8, rated at two PFLOPs, making them highly capable for intensive tasks.

These chips feature improvements in vector processing and memory access. Memory can now be accessed in smaller chunks, down to 128 bytes from the previous 512 bytes, allowing for more efficient data handling. Additionally, the Ascend 950 series boasts a significant boost in interconnect bandwidth, reaching 2 TB/s, which enhances communication between chips and improves overall performance.

Next-Generation Power with the Ascend 960

Huawei plans to release the Ascend 960 in the fourth quarter of 2027. This upcoming chip will double the power of the 950 series, offering twice the computing capability, memory bandwidth, and capacity. It will also feature more interconnect ports, making it suitable for complex, large-scale computing environments.

The Ascend 960 will introduce Huawei’s proprietary HiF4 data format, which provides higher precision than previous FP4 formats. This allows for more accurate computations, essential for scientific research, AI workloads, and other demanding applications. With these features, the Ascend 960 is designed to handle some of the most complex and resource-intensive tasks in modern data centers.

This chip exemplifies Huawei’s focus on delivering high-performance solutions that meet the needs of advanced computing tasks, especially in fields like AI, data analysis, and scientific simulations. Its increased power and efficiency aim to make it a competitive option for organizations seeking top-tier processing capabilities.

The Pinnacle: Ascend 970 and Huawei’s SuperPoDs

Looking further ahead, Huawei plans to launch the Ascend 970 in the fourth quarter of 2028. This chip is expected to be the most powerful in the lineup, with plans to support up to 8 PFLOPs of FP4 performance and a 4 TB/s interconnect bandwidth. The Ascend 970 will also have larger memory capacity to handle even more complex workloads.

Huawei is also introducing SuperPoDs, clusters of raw compute power in hyperscaler units. The first of these, called the Atlas 950, will feature Ascend 950DT chips and is set to debut in late 2026. Huawei claims these clusters will outperform many existing systems, offering more than 50 times the number of neural processing units and nearly seven times the processing power of competing NVIDIA systems.

In addition, Huawei plans to release new Kunpeng processors in early 2026. These will include models with 96 and 192 cores, designed to provide efficient performance across a range of applications outside of the most demanding high-performance environments. Overall, Huawei’s new chip lineup and cluster solutions position the company as a rising player in the high-performance computing landscape, aiming to challenge established industry leaders.

Inspired by

• https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/huawei-announces-new-ascend-chips-to-power-worlds-most-powerful-clusters/

Sources

• ai-expo.net
• techexevent.com
• techforge.pub
• techforge.pub