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Huawei pulls the Ascend 960DT training chip to early 2027

At Huawei Connect in Shanghai, rotating chairman David Wang said the Ascend 960DT training chip should be ready in the first quarter of 2027. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch the previous target was the third quarter of 2027. The Straits Times, citing Wang Tao at the same summit, adds a 960PR inference variant for the third quarter of 2027 and notes a 60 percent price rise on today's Ascend 950DT.

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A single unfinished AI accelerator plate is held toward the camera by a precision arm above empty sockets in a bright semiconductor cleanroom.

A first-quarter 2027 training chip

TechCrunch reports that Huawei is moving the next-generation Ascend 960DT to the first quarter of 2027, after David Wang announced the timeline at Huawei Connect on Thursday. A spokesperson told the site the company had previously planned a third-quarter 2027 launch and said the 960 series is launching ahead of schedule with claimed doubling of performance. A Huawei spokesperson told TechCrunch at Huawei Connect that the next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip is expected in the first quarter of 2027 instead of the third; that is an announced timetable; public shipment has not been shown. The spokesperson said rotating and acting chairman David Wang announced the updated timetable on Thursday. Huawei describes a Peerium Computing Architecture that uses UnifiedBus to link processors with memory, storage and networking; Atlas 950 SuperPoD and SuperCluster are the first systems on that architecture. The company says an Atlas 950 SuperCluster can connect up to 256,000 accelerator cards. Analyst Rui Ma wrote on X that an earlier Atlas 960 SuperPoD scale does not match this week’s description of a system with 4,096 chips. The Straits Times, writing from the same Shanghai summit, also puts the flagship 960DT in the first quarter of 2027.[1], [2]

A second chip for inference

The Straits Times, writing from the same 17 September Shanghai summit, says rotating chairman Wang Tao put the flagship 960DT in the first quarter after a late-2027 plan and named a 960PR variant for the third quarter of 2027. The Straits Times says rotating chairman Wang Tao spoke at the Shanghai summit on 17 September. It puts the 960PR inference chip in the third quarter of 2027 and says Huawei recently raised Ascend 950DT prices by 60 per cent, citing tight component supply. The paper also notes production bottlenecks and US export restrictions.[2]

Supply still bites the current generation

Both accounts place the announcement in a race with Nvidia. The Straits Times adds that Huawei recently raised Ascend 950DT prices by 60 percent, citing tight component supply in talks with customers, and still faces production bottlenecks and US export limits. The Straits Times says rotating chairman Wang Tao spoke at the Shanghai summit on 17 September. It puts the 960PR inference chip in the third quarter of 2027 and says Huawei recently raised Ascend 950DT prices by 60 per cent, citing tight component supply. The paper also notes production bottlenecks and US export restrictions.[2]

References

  1. News sourceTechCrunchHuawei pulled the Ascend 960DT AI chip forward to the first quarter of 2027↩
  2. News sourceThe Straits TimesHuawei pulls the Ascend 960DT AI chip forward to early 2027↩1↩2↩3
AI safety and regulationChip wars and the supply chainThe frontier model race

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