Huawei Dares Nvidia with Early Launch of Ascend 960DT AI Chip
Huawei has accelerated the launch of its new AI chip, Ascend 960DT, to Q1 2027. The Chinese tech giant had previously planned to release the chip in Q3 of that year, but will now bring it forward by six months.
The company's rotating and acting chairman, David Wang, announced the updated timeline at Huawei Connect on Thursday. This move is part of Huawei's effort to challenge Nvidia and its own AI computing architecture, Peerium Computing Architecture.
Huawei aims to build larger AI computing systems using this architecture, which relies on UnifiedBus technology. The company has already launched its Atlas 950 SuperPoD and SuperCluster systems based on this architecture. However, China tech analyst Rui Ma pointed out that the chip's accelerated timeline comes with questions about Huawei's broader AI systems.
Ma noted that Huawei had previously said its Atlas 960 SuperPoD would scale to 15,488 Ascend 960 chips, while the latest announcement referred to a system with only 4,096 chips. This discrepancy raises concerns about Huawei's ability to deliver on its ambitious plans.