Huawei has officially announced the upcoming launch of its Ascend 960 AI chip series, which is set to hit the commercial market in the first quarter of 2027. The company managed to accelerate the development timeline by three quarters compared to its original schedule.
The new Ascend 960 chips offer double the computing performance of their predecessors. According to Huawei, the design improvements also include significant upgrades to memory capacity, bandwidth, and interconnect throughput, all achieved through the application of the Tao scaling law.
The Tao scaling law, introduced in May 2026, serves as a core development principle for the company. Huawei expects this approach to enable the production of transistors equivalent to a 1.4-nm process by 2031, even without access to advanced lithography equipment.
Looking ahead, Huawei plans to maintain an annual update cycle for its AI hardware. The company has already scheduled the release of the Ascend 970 series for 2028, followed by the Ascend 980 series in 2029, focusing on architectural innovation to bridge performance gaps.
During the Connect 2026 conference, the company also unveiled the Ascend 960 SuperPoD computing cluster. This infrastructure solution integrates 15 488 proprietary Ascend AI chips, demonstrating the scale of the new hardware ecosystem.
