Story perspectives

Huawei Unveils Atlas 960 SuperPoD With Faster Ascend Chips

By Drooid · Sep 18, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC · How we work

Summary

Story summary

Huawei unveiled the Atlas 960 SuperPoD cluster at Connect 2026 in Shanghai.
The Atlas 960 uses Ascend 960 chips and doubles training and inference speed versus the Atlas 950.
Huawei will ship Ascend 960DT in Q1 2027, three quarters earlier than planned.
Rotating chairman Eric Xu said most Chinese AI model training will shift to Ascend-based SuperPoDs from next year.
Huawei announced Peerium Architecture and UnifiedBus, linking up to one million processors with 2 µs latency.

History

Historical Context

In June 2013, China’s National University of Defense Technology, backed by the 863 Program and partner Inspur, launched Tianhe-2, a 33.86-petaflop supercomputer that reclaimed the TOP500 lead from the United States. U.S. export restrictions in 2015 accelerated China’s shift to fully domestic architectures, a trajectory that now underpins the nation’s push for AI-focused supercomputers and aims to secure an independent chip supply chain.

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Story summary

Huawei unveiled the Atlas 960 SuperPoD cluster at Connect 2026 in Shanghai.
The Atlas 960 uses Ascend 960 chips and doubles training and inference speed versus the Atlas 950.
Huawei will ship Ascend 960DT in Q1 2027, three quarters earlier than planned.
Rotating chairman Eric Xu said most Chinese AI model training will shift to Ascend-based SuperPoDs from next year.
Huawei announced Peerium Architecture and UnifiedBus, linking up to one million processors with 2 µs latency.

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