[Huawei's Next-Generation Ascend 960 Chip Release Date Moved Up by 9 Months, 4096-Card Supernode Debuts NPO] Beating AI Newsflash: Huawei has moved up the release date of its next-generation Ascend 960 chip by 9 months. Initially planned for Q4 2027, Huawei announced today that the Ascend 960DT will be ready in Q1 2027, three quarters ahead of schedule, with the 960PR following in Q3. The 960DT single chip delivers 2 PFLOPS FP8 and 4 PFLOPS FP4 computing power, supports up to 288GB HBM, and offers a bandwidth of 9.6TB/s. Huawei also unveiled the new Ascend 960 supernode, which can connect up to 4096 NPUs in a single system, providing 8 EFLOPS FP8 computing power and 1PB HBM. For the first time, it adopts NPO (Near-Processor Optics) technology, replacing approximately 48,000 800G optical modules from the original design with 5,500 Hi-ONE units. Huawei claims this reduces power consumption by over 550 kilowatts. Huawei stated that it will continue its annual generation cycle for Ascend chips while leveraging Lingqu and optical interconnect technologies to scale up supernodes, further enhancing system-level computing power beyond individual chips. [Original Link]