An individual walks previous a show of an Atlas 900 AI cluster on the Huawei stand in the course of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on the Shanghai World Expo and Convention Center in Shanghai on July 28, 2025.
Hector Retamal | Afp | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei introduced Thursday new computing programs for powering synthetic intelligence with its in-house Ascend chips, as it steps up stress on U.S. rival Nvidia.
The firm mentioned it plans to launch its new “Atlas 950 SuperCluster” as quickly as subsequent 12 months.
The U.S. has sought to chop China off from probably the most superior semiconductors for coaching AI fashions. To cope, Chinese corporations have turned extra to grouping giant numbers of much less environment friendly, usually homegrown, chips collectively to achieve similar computing capabilities.
Under Huawei’s AI computing infrastructure, a supercluster is related to a number of superpods, which, in flip, are constructed from a number of supernodes. Supernodes, which type the bottom, are constructed on Ascend chips, utilizing system design to beat technical limitations imposed by U.S. sanctions.
Huawei mentioned its new Atlas 950 supernode would help 8,192 Ascend chips, and that the Atlas 950 TremendousCluster would use greater than 500,000 chips.
A extra superior Atlas 960 model, slated for launch in 2027, would help 15,488 Ascend chips per node. The full supercluster would have greater than 1 million Ascend chips, in response to Huawei.
It was not instantly clear how the programs in contrast with these powered by Nvidia chips. Huawei claimed in a press launch that the new supernodes could be the world’s strongest by computing energy for a number of years.
“Huawei’s announcement on its computing breakthrough is well timed with recent increasing emphasis by the Chinese government on self-reliance on China’s own chip technologies,” mentioned George Chen, associate and co-chair, digital follow, The Asia Group.
While he cautioned that Huawei would possibly exaggerate its technical capabilities, Chen identified that the Chinese firm’s ambition to be a world AI chief “cannot be underestimated.”
Research agency SemiAnalysis present in April that Huawei’s self-developed CloudMatrix system was capable of carry out higher than Nvidia’s — regardless of every Ascend chip delivering solely about one-third the efficiency of an Nvidia processor. Huawei constructed its benefit by having five times as many chips.
“Computing power has and will continue to be the key for AI,” Eric Xu, vice chairman and rotating chairman of Huawei, mentioned Thursday in a press release, translated by CNBC. He was talking on the opening of the corporate’s annual Huawei Connect occasion in Shanghai. The occasion runs via Saturday.
Two years in the past on the identical occasion, Huawei announced its Atlas 900 SuperCluster. The firm at present sells a “Atlas 900 AI Cluster” with “thousands” of Ascend chips.
Rising stress on Nvidia
Huawei’s announcement comes as China promotes homegrown alternatives to Nvidia. Earlier this week, the 2 nations wrapped up commerce talks in Spain that included a path towards resolving the long-contested U.S. operations of social media app TikTook, owned by Beijing-based startup ByteDance.
In one other aggressive sign, China on Monday introduced it was extending a probe into Nvidia over alleged monopolistic practices.
Pressure has solely risen since on the U.S. chipmaker. Its shares fell greater than 2% Wednesday after the Financial Times, citing sources, mentioned China has ordered native tech giants to stop tests and orders of the Nvidia RTX Pro 6000D chip.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang informed reporters he was “disappointed” to listen to the information of the reported ban. He’s beforehand described Huawei as a “formidable” competitor.
