Huawei to Take on Nvidia in AI Chip Market in Q1 2027

Huawei is accelerating the release of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip, shifting its planned launch from the third quarter of 2027 to the first quarter of 2027. Huawei's Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman, David Wang, announced the updated timeline at Huawei Connect 2026. The company aims to achieve roughly double the performance from one generation to the next with the Ascend 960 series.

In addition, Huawei is developing larger AI computing systems designed to combine hundreds of thousands of processors, forming a unified environment for AI training and inference. The architecture, known as Peerium Computing Architecture, utilizes Huawei's interconnect technology, UnifiedBus, to connect processors, memory, storage, network interfaces, and switches.

Huawei's Atlas 950 SuperPoD and SuperCluster are the first systems based on this architecture. Plans for the Atlas 960E SuperPoD, which can scale to 4,096 NPUs, and larger clusters supporting up to one million NPUs have also been introduced. The accelerated launch of the Ascend 960DT raises questions about earlier system roadmaps, as previously announced Atlas 960 SuperPoD configurations were intended to support 15,488 Ascend 960 chips.