TL;DR
At its Connect 2026 event in Shanghai on September 17, 2026, Huawei launched the Ascend 960 SuperPoD, the world's first supernode using NPO (near-package optics) technology, scaling to 4,096 cards at 8 EFLOPS FP8; the Ascend 960DT chip is now set to be ready in Q1 2027, three quarters ahead of the original plan.
Event overview
Huawei Connect 2026 opened in Shanghai on September 17, 2026. In his keynote, Huawei Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman Wang Tao unveiled the Ascend 960 SuperPoD, the world's first supernode built with NPO (Near Package Optics) technology, designed to accelerate training and inference of trillion-parameter-scale large models.
Key facts
- Supernode specs: built on the Lingqu (Interconnect) + Hi-ONE architecture, with orthogonal topology and full liquid cooling; unified memory addressing via Lingqu; scales to 4,096 cards at 8 EFLOPS FP8 and 16 EFLOPS FP4.
- Hi-ONE NPO optical engine: Huawei says it is the industry's first mass-produced NPO product with a total capacity of 7.2T and the only NPO product with a built-in light source; 5,500 Hi-ONE modules replace 48,000 800G optical modules, cutting power consumption by more than 550 kW and raising system availability to 99.8%.
- Cluster scale: multiple Ascend 960 supernodes can be linked via Lingqu network or RoCE into clusters of up to 512,000 cards; with multi-orbit topology, up to 1,000,000 cards are supported.
- Chip roadmap: Wang Tao said the Ascend 960 chip doubles performance; the Ascend 960DT is set to be ready in Q1 2027 (three quarters ahead of the original target) and the 960PR in Q3 2027; following an annual cadence, Ascend 970 and 980 are planned for 2028 and 2029.
Official sources
- The Paper (September 17, 2026): Huawei launches the Ascend 960 SuperPoD
- Global Times (September 17, 2026): Huawei unveils Ascend 960 SuperPoD to accelerate trillion-scale model training and inference