Huawei to Take on Nvidia in AI Chip Market in Q1 2027
Huawei is accelerating the launch of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip, moving its planned release from the third quarter of 2027 to the first quarter of 2027.
Huawei is accelerating the launch of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip, moving its planned release from the third quarter of 2027 to the first quarter of 2027.
Article outline
- What happened
- Background
- Why it matters
- The key numbers
- The details
- The bottom line
Key points
- While another version, the Ascend 960PR, is scheduled for the third quarter of 2027, huawei notes the Ascend 960DT will be available in Q1 2027.
- First, they've pulled the Ascend 960DT forward from Q4 2027 to Q1 2027.
- David Wang, Huawei's Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman, confirmed the updated timeline at Huawei Connect 2026 on Thursday.
- The announcement comes one week before US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington, DC, on September 24.
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In practice, a Huawei spokesperson informed TechCrunch that development of the Ascend 960 series is progressing ahead of schedule, with the business targeting roughly double the performance from one generation to the next.
Meanwhile, the announcement comes one week before US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington, DC, on September 24. Huawei's Second Tri-Fold Improves Screen Protection With New Inward Folding Design. Huawei Wants Millions of AI Chips to Work Together.
Huawei is additionally developing much larger AI computing systems designed to combine hundreds of thousands, and eventually as numerous as one million processors into a single computing environment. The firm calls the approach its Peerium Computing Architecture.
At the center of the architecture is UnifiedBus, Huawei's interconnect technology for linking processors, memory, storage, network interfaces and switches. Huawei notes the architecture is designed for both AI training and inference.
Notably, the Atlas 950 SuperPoD and SuperCluster are the first systems based on the architecture. Huawei notes an Atlas 950 SuperCluster with 256, 000 accelerator cards is already being deployed.
Huawei has additionally introduced the Atlas 960E SuperPoD. It can scale to 4, 096 NPUs. Multiple systems can be connected into larger clusters supporting as plenty of as one million NPUs. New Timeline Raises Questions Regarding Earlier Aims.
In practice, the accelerated Ascend 960 launch additionally creates some differences between Huawei's earlier and current system roadmaps.
According to China technology analyst Rui Ma, huawei had previously described an Atlas 960 SuperPoD capable of scaling to 15, 488 Ascend 960 chips, while the system unveiled this week supports 4, 096.
She remarked the chip itself is arriving significantly earlier than anticipated, but the newly confirmed SuperPoD is smaller than the configuration Huawei previously outlined.
I'm sure everyone saw this, but Huawei created some pretty sizeable AI chip announcements.
First, they've pulled the Ascend 960DT forward from Q4 2027 to Q1 2027. That's three quarters early. Wild.
And this is supposed to be a pretty substantial upgrade: 2x the compute, 2x memory. Rui Ma (@ruima) September 17, 2026. Nvidia CEO Backs Trump Against Calls to Slow AI Development. Huawei Continues AI Push Despite US Restrictions.
Huawei has continued developing AI processors despite US restrictions limiting China's access to advanced semiconductor technology.
Ma argued that these restrictions are unlikely to stop China from pursuing domestic semiconductor capabilities since the pressure to achieve technological self-sufficiency is now too significant.
In practice, the debate comes as AI firms and governments consider how swiftly frontier AI development should proceed.
Trump has resisted calls from some AI industry leaders to slow development over safety worries, arguing that the US needs to maintain its technological position relative to China. Huawei Rotating Chairman Eric Xu, meanwhile, has argued that Chinese AI firms need to accelerate development to close the gap with leading US businesses before they can fully understand and address the risks of more advanced AI systems.
While another version, the Ascend 960PR, is scheduled for the third quarter of 2027, huawei notes the Ascend 960DT will be available in Q1 2027. The firm additionally intends to introduce Ascend 970 and Ascend 980 chips in 2028 and 2029, respectively. Stay Connected with ProPakistani.
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In short, huawei to Take on Nvidia in AI Chip Market in Q1 2027 is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.




