Huawei Unveils Ascend 960 Supernode: 4,096 Cards, 8 EFLOPS

At Huawei Connect 2026 on September 17, rotating chairman Wang Tao unveiled the Ascend 960 supernode, scaling to 4,096 cards with 8 EFLOPS and slated for Q3 2027 delivery. It is Huawei's first supernode using near-package optics (NPO), and its training card Ascend 960DT is Huawei's first known accelerator with HBM. The launch schedule has moved up significantly versus the original plan.

Confirmed

• Huawei (Wang Tao) announced the Ascend 960 supernode at HC2026: 4,096 cards, 8 EFLOPS, Q3 2027 delivery (m1)
• The supernode uses 5,500 self-developed NPO engines to replace roughly 48,000 800G optical modules, with volume production said to be imminent (m2)
• Ascend 960DT (training) has 288GB HBM and 4 PFLOPS FP4, launching Q1 2027, three quarters early; Ascend 960R (inference) arrives Q3 2027, three months early (m3, m4)
• Per Zhidx's analysis, Huawei's simulations show the 4,000-card supernode reaching 2.75x the MFU of traditional clusters; the context is that inter-card communication in 100k-card clusters can consume over 40% of training time with MFU often below 30%, and the supernode's unified memory addressing organizes thousands of cards into one logical computer (m5)

Unconfirmed

• @pstAsiatech notes the 5,500 NPO engine substitution is currently Huawei's claim only, with no shipments or third-party verification (m2)
• All compute and MFU figures come from Huawei's own statements or simulations, with no independent testing yet

Why it matters

• With single-chip compute still behind Nvidia, Huawei is betting on interconnect and cluster architecture to compete at the system level (m3)
• If large-scale NPO substitution of pluggable optics materializes, it could sharply cut cluster interconnect complexity and power draw—a key signal for China's AI infrastructure roadmap (m2, m5)
• The schedule pulled forward by up to three quarters signals Huawei's intent to accelerate iteration under sanctions pressure (m3, m4)

2026-09-20 ~ 2026-09-21 · 5 related posts

Full story(3 episodes)→

• Episode 1: Huawei's Ascend 960DT rumored to offer 288GB memory in 2027(2026-09-17, 3 posts)
• Episode 2: Huawei Unveils Ascend 960 and UnifiedBus, Targeting Million-Chip AI Clusters(2026-09-17, 6 posts)
• Episode 3: Huawei Unveils Ascend 960 Supernode: 4,096 Cards, 8 EFLOPS(2026-09-20, 5 posts)

• Huawei's Ascend 960DT is its first HBM accelerator: 288GB, 9.6TB/s, 4 PFLOPS FP4 — pstAsiatech · 2026-09-20
• [source] Huawei unveils Ascend 960 supernode: 4,096 cards, 8 EFLOPS FP8, NPO optics, Q3 2027 — teortaxesTex · 2026-09-21
• [source] Huawei pulls Ascend 960 AI chips forward by up to 9 months to challenge Nvidia — MirelaXhota · 2026-09-21
• Huawei says Ascend 960 supernode will use 5,500 NPO engines to replace 48,000 800G optical modules — pstAsiatech · 2026-09-21
• [source] Inside Huawei's Ascend 960 Supernode: 4,096 Cards, Unified Memory, 2.75x MFU — 智东西 · 2026-09-21