Huawei AI Chips Accelerate: Ascend 960 Series to Launch Early with Doubled Performance

At Huawei Connect 2026, Huawei Rotating Chairman Wang Tao announced that the R&D progress of the Ascend 960 chip has exceeded expectations, with its overall performance doubling and its release schedule moved up.

Specifically, the Ascend 960DT is set to launch in Q1 2027, three quarters ahead of the original plan, while the Ascend 960PR will be released in Q3 2027, one quarter earlier than scheduled. Huawei will maintain its one-generation-per-year upgrade cadence moving forward, with the Ascend 970 planned for 2028 and the Ascend 980 for 2029.

At Huawei Connect 2025, the company previously revealed that the Ascend 960 chip will be equipped with 288GB of memory and a bandwidth of 9.6TB/s, while the Ascend 970 will feature 288GB of memory and a bandwidth of 14.4TB/s. Starting with the Ascend 950 series, Huawei has adopted its self-developed HBM solutions (HiBL 1.0 / HiZQ 2.0) to eliminate reliance on overseas suppliers.