Huawei unveils Ascend 960 supernode with industry-first NPO interconnect
At HUAWEI CONNECT 2026 in Shanghai on Sept 17, Huawei launched the Ascend 960 supernode, the industry's first to adopt NPO (Near-Packaged Optics) technology. Each supernode features 4,096 Ascend cards, delivering up to 8E FP8 computing power and 1PB of HBM capacity.
The company also introduced the Hi-ONE optical interconnect product, which achieves 7.2T per engine through a balanced design across optical, mechanical, electrical, magnetic and thermal elements. In the Ascend 960 supernode, 5,500 Hi-ONE units replace 48,000 800G optical modules, reducing power consumption by more than 550kW and doubling system uptime, with availability reaching 99.8%.
Huawei said the Ascend 960 chip has made faster-than-expected progress, delivering doubled performance. The Ascend 960DT is scheduled for launch in Q1 2027, three quarters ahead of schedule, while the Ascend 960PR is planned for Q3 2027, one quarter earlier. The company plans to keep a one-generation-per-year cadence, with the Ascend 970 in 2028 and the Ascend 980 in 2029.
Huawei also upgraded its Kunpeng supernode and launched the OceanStor M900 AI memory storage system. With the UnifiedBus interconnect, the company is building an Agentic supernode cluster that can scale to 512,000 cards, and with multi-orbit topology, up to 1 million Ascend cards.
